Edge Rusher is at the top of the Los Angeles Rams needs heading into the 2024 season. They finished 2023 as the 8th worst pass-rushing team in the league with an 18.9 percent pressure rate and a good chunk of that (41 percent) came from their interior pass rushers.
The Los Angeles Rams Are QB Pressure-Needy. Does A Leonard Floyd Reunion Address That?
A familiar outside linebacker will hit free agency in March. Leonard Floyd signed a one-year, $7 million contract with the Bills last year after he was a part of the Rams slash-and-burn offseason fire sale.
But Floyd has put the league on notice that he won’t settle for just any rinky dink contract and he isn’t going to give the Rams a family discount He will go where the money is.
“For me, I’m always going where the money goes. I’d rather be here, but it is what it is. It’s a business. I’m gonna go wherever my agent feels like we get the most money from,” Floyd said while cleaning out his locker at the team’s facility earlier this week.
With the Buffalo Bills last season, Floyd matched his career-high mark with 10.5 sacks, that mark led the team. He also led the Bills in quarterback pressures with 25, tied with Gregory Rousseau.
The Rams are currently $27.7 million under the cap, so they have the resources to sign Floyd, but it will all come down to the bidding war that is inevitable for a talented edge rusher like him. He won’t fetch the type of money that will be spent on the top-tier edge-rushing free agents like Brian Burns or Josh Allen, but will likely get a contract similar to what Za’Darius Smith got from Cleveland last season. That will put him in the $10 million range, which is doable for the Rams.
But will the Rams want to spend that much on the 31-year-old?
Floyd was selected ninth overall by the Chicago Bears in the 2016 NFL Draft. He played out his rookie contract there and then signed with the Los Angeles Rams, winning a Super Bowl ring with the team in 2021.
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