The Rams could use RB help, but they shouldn’t trade for Leonard Fournette.
Leonard Fournette is coming off the best season of his career, so naturally, the Jacksonville Jaguars are looking to move on from the talented running back. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Jaguars have had trade talks with teams about Fournette.
Those discussions go back more than a month, and in the last three days, the Jaguars have circled back with teams. There haven’t been any takers yet, according to Ian Rapoport, but Fournette could still be traded.
If you scour Twitter for reactions to this news, one team comes up as a logical fit for Fournette more than most: the Rams.
The connection between L.A. and Jacksonville is undeniable, considering the Rams have added three of the Jaguars’ most prominent players in the last two years. They traded for Dante Fowler Jr., signed Blake Bortles and acquired Jalen Ramsey in a blockbuster deal, so it’s easy to connect the dots there.
Ramsey and Fournette are good friends, too, recently talking on FaceTime.
After cutting Todd Gurley, the Rams have a hole at running back. While Darrell Henderson and Malcolm Brown are capable starters, Los Angeles has done homework on running back prospects in the draft and could be in the market for some help at that position.
But would Fournette actually make sense as a trade acquisition for the Rams? On paper, sure. But in reality, not exactly.
First, let’s look at the biggest hurdle standing in the way of any possible trade: the salary cap. Currently, the Rams are over the cap by about $5.3 million, according to Over the Cap. They’re the only team with no cap space, and there aren’t many easy avenues to clearing more room.
The Rams haven’t even officially signed Leonard Floyd, whose one-year, $10 million deal isn’t accounted for in that cap figure. So in order to fit him and the incoming draft class under the cap, the Rams need to clear more than $10 million.
That can be done by restructuring Jared Goff’s and Aaron Donald’s contracts, but the team seems reluctant to do that because of the ramifications that come with pushing money into future years. So right off the bat, the Rams will find it difficult to make room for Fournette’s $4.16 million salary in 2020.
Secondly, draft capital isn’t something Los Angeles can necessarily afford to give away. The Rams have two picks each in the second and third rounds, but they don’t have any selections in the first or fifth rounds. The Jaguars probably wouldn’t take less than a third for Fournette, and trading a top-100 pick for a running back after just cutting one last month makes little sense.
Then there’s the scheme fit, which isn’t great with Fournette and the Rams. While he’s plenty fast enough to break off big runs, and powerful enough to gain yards after contact, Fournette lacks the agility and later quickness to thrive in a zone blocking scheme that heavily features outside runs.
Although he improved as a receiver last season with 76 catches for 522 yards, Fournette isn’t viewed as a dynamic playmaker in the passing game – something the Rams like for their running backs to be. And when it comes to creating yards by himself, he struggles in that area.
Fournette broke 16 tackles last season, but he only averaged one broken tackle per 16 attempts, which ranked 32nd in the NFL. In 2018, he was third-to-last at 44.3 attempts per broken tackle.
There are many hurdles preventing the Rams from acquiring Fournette, as well as several factors that make him a poor fit in Los Angeles. But there are two things that do make sense in this hypothetical scenario.
The first is the fact that Les Snead and Sean McVay want the Rams to get back to their roots of running the ball and establishing the ground game the way they did with Gurley in 2017 and 2018 – more specifically with Gurley and C.J. Anderson at the end of the 2018 season.
Fournette is a true workhorse who can play all three downs, similar to the way Gurley could. He can run between the tackles and pick up tough yards, which Henderson and Brown may struggle to do.
Additionally, Fournette hasn’t been afforded the chance to run in an offense that features a capable passing game. When Bortles was there, teams would load the box against Fournette because the pass wasn’t a real threat. In 2018, Fournette faced boxes of eight-plus defenders 35.34% of the time – third-most in the NFL. Gurley’s rate that year, for comparison, was only 7.81% (third-lowest).
In 2017, that number was 48.51% for Fournette (fifth-highest) and 16.85% for Gurley (third-lowest). It’s part of the reason Fournette only gained 1.6 yards before contact (45th) in 2018 and 1.4 (43rd) last season. His offensive line and supporting cast were terrible, forcing him to run into stacked boxes.
All this is to say the Rams most likely aren’t going to trade for Fournette. They don’t have the cap space or the wealth of draft capital to strike a deal that works in their favor, nor would trading for an oft-injured running back after cutting Gurley make much sense.
But as always, never rule anything out with the Rams.
