The Los Angeles Rams and all other NFL teams were forced to cut their rosters down to 53 players ahead of Saturday’s afternoon’s deadline.
Doing that this year was a lot more difficult compared to years past as coaches and front offices did not have any preseason games to evaluate their players.
The Rams brought in a number of talented players this offseason, which made Les Snead and Sean McVay’s decisions on Saturday not easy. After a lot of thought though, the team announced a handful of roster cuts in the last couple of days to get their roster down to 52 players, via Adam Schefter of ESPN:
Hard Knocks spoiler alert: Rams have waived the following players: pic.twitter.com/Hp0ZMqgqyf
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 4, 2020
Rams’ roster moves, which leaves them with 52 players on their roster: pic.twitter.com/29DO6pZbV6
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 5, 2020
Cutting the roster down to 52 means the Rams still have one more spot to sign a free agent from another roster or bring back one of their own.
Among the notable cuts they made this year are Hard Knocks favorites Donte Deayon and Clay Johnston. The secondary is a big strength of the Rams this year, so they unfortunately did not have room for Deayon, although he could potentially be back as a member of the practice squad.
The same can be said for Johnston, who was a seventh-round pick this year. Johnston is coming off a torn ACL though so was a bit behind the other linebackers in camp.
One other tough decision the Rams had to make was at the kicker position after Greg Zuerlein left in free agency this offseason. They ultimately went with Samuel Sloman, who they drafted this year, over Lirim Hajrullahu and Austin MacGinnis.
Another notable cut was running back John Kelly, who has been with the organization for a couple of years now. Instead, the Rams decided to go with undrafted free agent Xavier Jones for their final running back spot behind Malcolm Brown, Cam Akers and Darrell Henderson.
Also of note, the Rams placed linebacker Travin Howard and the injured reserve list, and did the same for defensive tackle A’Shawn Robinson, although his was designated as a non-football injury.
Considering the Rams’ lack of depth at linebacker, they likely will use their final roster spot to bring in someone at that position. They also awarded outside linebacker Jachai Polite with a roster spot after bring him last year as a member of the practice squad after the third-round pick was waived by the New York Jets.
