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Michael Brockers had been a Baltimore Raven, unofficially, for nearly two weeks. But Brockers’ foray into free agency was an odd one this offseason and he ended up back with the Los Angeles Rams thanks to some concerns over his ankle.
With the coronavirus pandemic making getting physicals tougher, teams and players have had to turn to independent physicians to get things done. According to Brockers, it was there that things began to fall apart with the Ravens.
“I did my physical here in Houston,” Brockers said on the Green Light podcast, according to Rams Wire’s Cameron Da Silva. “I go to the doctor, they take X-rays and I did an MRI. The doctor sent it to Baltimore and Baltimore’s doctor gets to look at it and he says, ‘You know, I’m not a specialist, but I’m going to send it to a guy that I truly trust and he’s a third-party doctor. He’ll just tell me what’s up.’ I guess that doctor told him I might need something like a surgery and they were like, ‘Oh.’
“They get my MRI, they get all this stuff. Then we don’t hear from them after that. And I guess that’s the process where they were sending MRIs to Anderson or whoever and getting his word for it.”
It was at this point the Ravens pulled their offer and tried to work on a new deal with those concerns in mind, according to The Athletic’s Jeff Zrebiec. However, minutes after Baltimore announced the deal had fallen through, Brockers had agreed to terms with the Rams, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.
Brockers passed his physical with Los Angeles, making the deal official. According to Brockers, the injury came in the last game of the 2019 season but was never really a problem to begin with.
“I feel great. I’ve been working out the whole time,” Brockers continued.
This isn’t Baltimore’s first time having a deal fall through at the last minute thanks to injury concerns. The Ravens had agreed to terms with free-agent wide receiver Ryan Grant in 2018 before a failing a physical with an ankle injury. The Ravens pulled out of the deal and Grant ended up signing with the Indianapolis Colts but he ended up playing in just 14 games thanks to an ankle injury suffered in Week 6 against the New York Jets.
With Brockers out of the picture, Baltimore turned to Derek Wolfe on a one-year contract, getting their replacement defensive lineman. For Brockers, “it worked out the way it was supposed to.”