The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Rams add Robinson, another WR threat
When your offense is built around a star quarterback, you can’t have too many talented receivers.
The Rams rode that theory to a Super Bowl championship and look as if they want to do it again.
The Rams announced Thursday they agreed to terms with former Chicago Bears wide receiver Allen Robinson on a threeyear contract reported to be worth $46.5 million, of which $30.7 million is guaranteed.
Robinson, 28, was a free agent after a disappointing season by his standards in 2021, when a hamstring injury limited the former Jacksonville Jaguars second-round draft pick to 12 games, 38 catches, 410 yards and one touchdown.
Before that down year, he was ranked as the 87thbest player in the league in the NFL Top 100 voting by his peers, having caught 102 passes for 1,250 yards and six TDS for the Bears in 2020.
In the season that made his reputation, Robinson caught a league-leading 14 touchdown passes for the Jaguars in 2015 and was voted to the Pro Bowl.
Having done those things with Blake Bortles, Mitchell Trubisky, Nick Foles and Andy Dalton passing to him, now he’ll have Matthew Stafford.
The Rams might have been expected to make their first acquisition of the NFL’S free-agent signing period an outside linebacker to replace Von Miller, who was signed away by the Buffalo Bills on Wednesday.
Instead, they added to a wide receiver corps that already includes NFL Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp, five-year Rams fixture Robert Woods and Van Jefferson and a few promising younger players. The group will include Odell Beckham Jr. if the Rams re-sign their most prominent remaining free agent.
Is that too many receivers for Stafford to keep happy?
The question came up last year when GM Les Snead and Coach Sean Mcvay signed Desean Jackson in March and again when they signed Beckham out of an unhappy situation with the Cleveland Browns on Nov. 11.
But the Rams needed all sticky hands on deck. Jackson lasted only seven games before the Rams waived him. Beckham became not an extra piece but a vital fill-in when Woods suffered a season-ending knee injury on Nov. 13.
Beckham is expected to miss about half of the regular season after tearing an ACL in the Super Bowl, and Woods is expected to be ready for training camp.
Presumably, the starting trio will be Kupp, Woods and Robinson, and they’ll see how things develop.
They know Robinson well enough to be sure he’ll work out better than Jackson did.
The Penn State product was a teammate of Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey with the Jaguars before going to the Bears as a free agent in 2018 on a three-year, $42 million contract.
And Rams coaches have game-planned to contain him when they’ve faced him each of the past five seasons, unusual for a non-nfc West opponent.
Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris has said Robinson has been “a premier receiver in this league for a long time.”
“He does some things very, very well. He’s a great isolation player. He’s a great player in third down,” Morris said before the Rams beat the Bears, 34-14, at Sofi Stadium on opening night in 2021, a game in which Robinson was held to 35 on six catches from Dalton and Justin Fields. “They’re going to try to get him the ball in his hands, particularly in the third-down situations, particularly in situations when you have to have (the first down).”
Robinson’s talents should fit well in a passing attack that ranked fifth in yards per game (273.1), third in yards per attempt (8.1) and second in touchdowns (41) during the 2021 regular season.