Rams report, 2/21: No franchise player for Rams

* According to Jason LaCanfora on NFL Network, the Rams are not going to use the franchise tag on anyone before the March 5th deadline. This came up as the result of a ProFootballTalk interview with Brandon Lloyd yesterday in which he said he's open to returning to the Rams, and wouldn't be upset if they used the franchise tag on him.

Well, of course he wouldn't. The franchise tag would jack his salary from roughly $1 million last year to $9.5 million this season. PFT has opined that the Rams need to franchise Lloyd, because it's better than signing him to a long-term contract at age 31, and already needing one wide receiver, they can't afford to lose Lloyd to another team.


Continuing to publicly keep all of his options open, Lloyd continued to express his desire to play for Josh McDaniels and the Patriots in Monday's interview, also professing admiration for Tom Brady and for the Patriots organization. And continuing to keep his message mixed, the Patriots are the one team his St. Louis-based agent Tom Condon has difficulty dealing with.

In the end, I think PFT's glossing over that the Rams have far too many needs to fit under the salary cap to expend a huge chunk of it on a 31-year-old wideout. I like Lloyd and would like to keep him, but the Rams can't break the bank for him. The only player I possibly imagined the Rams franchising was Donnie Jones. Lloyd isn't going to break the bank anywhere he goes, so he should go for the best situation, which is obviously Foxborough. He's such a big upgrade over Deion Branch that I'd recommend the Patriots play nice with Condon for a change.

* Combine: what not to watch. Reports are that neither Andrew Luck nor Robert Griffin III are going to throw at the NFL Combine this weekend, and will save it for their back-to-back pro days March 21 and 22 (Griffin goes first). Honestly, this sucks for the Rams (and the Colts). A solid Combine from either doesn't drive up their value, true, but it could have driven up the value of the Rams' second pick overall. The ideal scenario would have been Griffin lighting the place up and teams tripping over one another with trade offers for the Rams. Instead, we're all on hold another three weeks, holding our breath that neither QB blows their on-campus workout.

* Combine: what to watch. As far as I can tell, Justin Blackmon is running at the Combine, in what should be the most-watched 40-yard dash in Rams history. That's pretty much the whole weekend as far as RamView is concerned, but I'll attempt to cover this year's televised proceedings as usual.

* Food for thought as Paul Boudreau eventually takes over the Rams' offensive line: while acknowledging he had a limited number of attempts, Pro Football Focus says the tackle to grade out the best in pass protection in the league last year was - Harvey Dahl.

You can probably guess how well the other Rams' tackles ranked. Jason Smith 41st, Adam Goldberg 47th, Rodger Saffold a jaw-dropping 65th.

* Ramview.com is as up-to-date as it's been since Halloween. I've still got some coaching writeups to do, but they can all be linked to from there. The calendar now has the correct year (!), and I'm searching for fresh stuff to put in the Recommended Reading section. I will eventually admit the 2011 season existed, just haven't had time to create the archive for it. The all-time teams will be getting updates as well when I get time. Josh McDaniels is going on one of them, guess which!

-$-