Rams continue making surprise moves with Robert Quinn trade

The Los Angeles Rams continue to make big moves after agreeing to trade Robert Quinn to the Miami Dolphins.

Even though the new year isn’t officially underway in the NFL, the Los Angeles Rams have certainly kept themselves busy so far in the offseason between the trade to acquire Marcus Peters from the Kansas City Chiefs along with the recent decision to move on from Tavon Austin. On Friday, the Rams continued to make major moves to clear up some salary by agreeing to trade linebacker Robert Quinn to the Miami Dolphins.

Entering the offseason, Los Angeles knew they would have an important decision to make when it comes to Quinn since the former North Carolina star was going to be expensive to keep around with his base salary alone in 2018 being $10. 3 million. Without question, Quinn has been a valuable member of the Rams’ defense over the last seven years, and is coming off a strong 2017 campaign in which he recorded 8.5 sacks, but at the end of the day, the NFL is still a business where decisions have to be made for what’s best for the team.

As much as Los Angeles would have loved to bring Quinn back for an eighth season, it would have been tough to still have him under contract when some of that money could be used on other key players like Aaron Donald, who will hopefully receive a new contract himself sooner rather than later. And even though what the Rams are receiving in return doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, keep in mind the main reason behind this decision on Quinn is clearly for cap space.

At least a mid-round pick is better than nothing, right? Either way, the decision to move on from Quinn was certainly tough for the organization, but keep in mind that Los Angeles doesn’t make these decisions without some sort of game plan to know it will all work out just fine.

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Plus, as mentioned before, the decision to trade Quinn will draw plenty of speculation that a new deal for Donald could be coming sooner rather than later now that Los Angeles has cleared up some cap space. If Rams fans weren’t already excited enough about what could be in store for Sean McVay‘s system, one can only imagine what the next month or so is going to be like when seeing all of the big moves the team is already making, and it’s only the start of March.