How Rams got deals done
In the first of a three-part series, Gary Klein reports on the Rams’ acquisitions of star cornerbacks Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters during the offseason.
After a flurry of offseason moves, the Rams begin the season with a remade roster that features newcomers in cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib, defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh and receiver Brandin Cooks. The Times’ Gary Klein gives a behind-the-scenes look of how each was acquired, in the voices of the people involved. Part 1 of 3 FEB. 24 MARCUS PETERS
is acquired from the Kansas City Chiefs for a fourth-round draft pick in 2018 and a second-round pick in 2019. The trade could not become official until March 14.
General manager Les Snead: The first call came in and I remember I was working out at the facility in our weight room. I saw Brett Veach, their GM, pops up, so I let it go to voicemail and called him back on the way home . ... They say, “We think it’s going to be best for us to move him. Are you in the mix?”
Coach Sean McVay: Les calls me, he says, “Why don’t you and the defensive staff take a look and see if you’d be interested in Marcus Peters.”
Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips: Sean comes in to my office and says, “Hey, we got a chance to get this guy.” I said, “Well, yeah.” This time of year a lot of those things come up. Even Odell Beckham came up.
Vice president football & business administration Tony Pastoors: The first question you have to answer in any trade is, why? Why are they willing to trade this guy? It doesn’t matter who the player is, it’s, OK, why? And it could be a scheme change, a regime change . ... Sometimes it’s pretty simple and sometimes it’s more complicated. … Sean is huge on culture. You saw it firsthand: 2016 and 2017 felt a lot different. Not just wins and losses, just the vibe around our building, how our players were. And so I think one of the biggest things we all thought with any offseason move we were considering was, “Don’t mess that up. We got a good thing going. Let’s continue to add to it and supplement but let’s not mess that up.”
Executive vice president for football operations Kevin Demoff: You realize, for two years at $10 million, certainly it fit very well into where you’re able to add a very talented player at a cost that would not affect our ability to keep our core intact.
Snead: You ultimately get permission to talk to their agent. “Hey, are you thinking of holding out?” You clear all that up and you do your vetting, and you feel like, “You know what? This is an opportunity for us to get a corner that has skill set, and if Wade had his druthers, we’d take that type of skill set.”
Phillips: I still went ahead and looked at him because I would go back and say, “Hey, I’m not sure about that,” if I thought he wasn’t going to be the kind of player I thought he was going to be.
McVay: You see a really smart football player show up on tape that affects the game from a cornerback spot, which is really rare. … We were all in agreement as a staff. You say, “Hey, let’s go get this guy” and basically, “Let’s go get it done, Les.”
Kevin Demoff: On Thursday night … I got a call from Les when I landed in Boston [for the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at MIT]. He’s in Hawaii. He says, “Hey, this may happen tomorrow, it may happen in two weeks.” McVay: I called [soon-to-be free agent cornerback] Trumaine [Johnson]. … You say, “I don’t know if something is going to happen but there’s potential that we’re getting ready to acquire a high-profile corner.” If I’m going to sit there and look you in the eye and preach clear and open and honest communication, I want to at least make sure that I’m following through with my end of the bargain. Former Rams cornerback Trumaine Johnson: He just wanted me to stay in the loop with everything. He respected me as a player on and off the field and as a person also and I appreciate him for that. Kara Snead (GM Snead’s wife): We’re in Maui. We were zip-lining one day, we’re off in the trees somewhere and the next day we’re snorkeling, and he was laughing. He’s like, “I probably look like I’m playing hard to get.” McVay: It was a lot of back and forth. Les and I probably talked, called each other, back and forth probably 10 to 15 times over a 12-hour period. Les Snead: I went to bed that Friday night knowing that we’re going to talk to Kansas City on Saturday morning and they were maybe going to talk to other teams as well. But I knew there was going to be some sort of resolution. “OK, look, you’re on Central time. We’re in Hawaii.” I don’t even know what time zone that is, so basically I said, “I’ll get up as early as you need me to for the 7 a.m. Hawaii call.” Kara Snead: We would be in the lobby and in our pajamas drinking coffee. He’s on the phone trying to work through the trade. Pastoors: They were very straightforward in what their compensation should be. It really wasn’t too far off from what we viewed. Les Snead: When [Veach] finally gets to me at 7 a.m. it’s down to, if we’re still in there, only a few I’s to dot and Ts to cross. Demoff: Les called and said, “Hey, it’s done.” I was watching another panel [at the conference]. I think it was when President Obama was about to go to talk that I got the call. Marcus Peters: You get the calls because family is going to watch all the unnecessary sportswriting and all that other stuff and you hear it. But you don’t know it’s real till you get a call from your agent. Pastoors: I don’t want to say you’re a little nervous but you’re maybe slightly uneasy until you actually know this thing is done and the paperwork is in and Marcus shows up for his physical and [Rams director of sports medicine and performance] Reggie Scott gives you one of these [thumbs up] … and Marcus shows up for a press conference. Then you feel good about it all. That’s when you go, “OK, I feel really good now.” You’re excited until then but you just need to make sure this all goes through and the league actually approves the trade.
Peters: When it was done I was happy to come home [to California]. I wasn’t worried about nothing else.
Kara Snead: That’s the way it goes. You get vacation time and you’re going through the biggest trades of the season.
Les Snead: You have the coffee, the open air and the scenery in Hawaii. I don’t know if there’s a better place to make a trade.
MARCH 8 AQIB TALIB
is acquired from the Denver Broncos for a fifth-round draft pick in 2018. The trade could not become official until March 14.
Les Snead: You always read, in terms of headlines, what’s going on around the league. You knew they were willing to trade Aqib through the media reports.
Tony Pastoors: Like anyone else, you can turn on “SportsCenter“or NFL Network and hear what everyone’s saying, so you try to keep tabs on some of those things.
Kevin Demoff: Denver was looking to clear salary-cap space to go acquire a quarterback.
Denver Broncos general manager John Elway: If rumors get out there, then teams call.
Snead: So what you do is check in with Denver and John [Elway]. “Is this true?” He says, “Yeah.” At that point you begin to flirt.
Pastoors: Our pro department is ahead on all that stuff. They watched everybody and they have grades on people. I’ll work with [director of pro personnel] Ray Agnew and his staff for potential cap casualties with high salaries, or that may have lost favor with the coaching staff, or the staff has changed. He’s got two years left on his contract, it’s $11 million and $8 million, nothing’s guaranteed. You know that stuff so when Les or Sean [coach Sean McVay] brings it up in a discussion you can say, “Hey, this is what it is.”
Demoff: This was different from Marcus [Peters trade], which came up quickly and you were trying to figure out, “How do we piece this together?” Aqib’s situation was a scenario we had discussed in January and February and were much more prepared for.
Sean McVay: I was with him in Tampa, and Wade [Phillips] obviously has a great history with him.
Snead: You say, “Hey Wade. Thumbs up or thumbs down on Talib?”
Wade Phillips: I just said, “Yeah, it would be great.” I mean, I kind of OK’d it.
Snead: Then you want to go watch Aqib and see what he’s done in the year that Wade didn’t coach him to make sure, “Hey, he’s still who you think he is” and things like that.
Elway: We had a deal [to trade Talib] with San Francisco.
Aqib Talib: I got a heads up that it really wasn’t a trade if I take no physical. I talked with [49ers general manager] John [Lynch] and coach [Kyle] Shanahan and I told them I have the utmost respect for John Lynch. I love that guy. Man, I’ve been around him a lot too, Tampa to Denver. I just told them like just going into year 11, I wanted to just be comfortable. I ain’t really want to learn a whole new defense. … Then I kind of told them, “Hey, I don’t know if I’m going to come out there and take no physical.” So they were kind of, “All right.”
Elway: San Francisco, I thought, would have been a good spot for him with John Lynch there. But that was not in his plan.
Talib: John Elway gave me a call back and it was like, well, I kind of told them, “Man, if I’m going to be uncomfortable then my contract needs to be comfortable.” They was like, “Well, we’ll see.” And they didn’t really want to do anything with the money, so John was like, “Where would you go with your contract as is?”
Elway: The two teams he had mentioned that he wanted to go to were the Rams or even the Patriots.
Snead: Once you do [the] Marcus [Peters trade] you’re like, “You know what? We’re never getting Aqib Talib.” But then everybody’s juggling all the balls and the dust settles and he’s still out there.
Talib: The next thing I know, coach McVay is giving me a call.
McVay: We were happy that he wanted to be a part of us.
Pastoors: [The Talib-to-49ers trade] was one of those, “Nothing’s done until the paperwork gets signed March 14.” That’s an example of it.
Snead: John [Elway] and I worked for however many days talking back and forth and there was a good possibility of getting something done.
Demoff: The main thing on Aqib was we had gotten Marcus and we’re trying to figure out, “OK, how do you absorb the salary?” Because it was pretty clear after the 49ers that Aqib was not intending to take a pay cut.
Pastoors: My role is to make sure it all works and adds up. One of the things you never want to have to say is, “No. We can’t do that because of cap space.” You never ever want that to be an excuse. You can always create cap space and do all these different things.
Snead: You have to make an internal decision on, “OK, if we can get Aqib we thought for the big picture we might have to move [linebacker] Alec [Ogletree].”
Demoff: That’s really where the [March 7] Ogletree trade [to the New York Giants] came into play with what were very similar salaries and costs.
McVay: To be able to take on some of these great players, unfortunately you have to give a little bit and that’s where you lose a great player in Alec Ogletree.
Demoff: One of the conversations all season last year was really focusing the offseason on rebuilding the defense for Wade the way he likes it. Alec Ogletree doesn’t get traded unless you’re trying to solve the corner position.
McVay: [Soon-to-be free agent cornerback] Trumaine [Johnson] and I had a good rapport. We had actually talked the day before in person because when the Ogletree thing went down, obviously he had a lot of loyalty to Alec, and I think there were some things he wanted to know as to the reason behind it. [As the trade for Talib was getting done] I was on the bus to the terminal at Burbank Airport to go to Vegas for my brother’s bachelor party. I called Trumaine. You tell him, “Hey, just want to let you know, so you hear it from us, we’re probably getting ready to get a deal finalized where [we] sign another high-profile corner like yourself. And that probably means you’ll be able to pursue some of the other options and opportunities out there.” He couldn’t have been more classy about that.
Trumaine Johnson: I understand. It’s a business at the end of the day, it really is.
Demoff: I’m in Vegas [at the Pac-12 Conference basketball tournament] catching up on the Pac-12 and talking to them about the Pac-12 [football] championship game potentially coming to Hollywood Park and a bunch of other concepts. I was sitting courtside with Magic Johnson — one of our new suite holders — and I got a call that a deal is close.
Snead: You’re like, “All right, by the time you land in L.A. there’s a chance this is done.”
Kevin Demoff: Les called back when the deal was done, which was the first half of the UCLA-Stanford game. … I said to Magic, “Hey, we just traded for Aqib Talib.” Got a nice fist bump from Magic, and that was that.