Rams go from praise to criticism within a year over Todd Gurley’s contract

With the uncertainty surrounding Todd Gurley’s knee heading into the 2019 season, the Los Angeles Rams may end up regretting their running back’s contract.

Last offseason, the Los Angeles Rams rewarded numerous key players with extensions to save a little money down the road, one of which happened to be Todd Gurley.

At the time, Gurley was coming off a career year with the Rams in 2017 after finishing with 2,093 yards from scrimmage to go along with 19 touchdowns, which was good enough to finish second in the MVP voting to Tom Brady.

So when taking a closer look at these numbers compared to the four-year, $60 million extension Gurley was receiving, Los Angeles received plenty of praise for getting this deal out of the way since there was always the chance of the asking price going up down the road.

After watching Gurley follow up with another strong season in 2018 that consisted of 21 trips into the end zone along with 1,831 scrimmage yards in 14 games, the Rams still seemed to have made a great decision with their star running back.

That is until the final two games of the postseason took place, as Gurley would go on to rush for just 10 yards and a touchdown on four carries in the NFC Championship before another disappointing performance in the Super Bowl consisting of just 35 rushing yards.

Clearly, something was up with the former Georgia standout, and while it took some time for the Rams to finally speak some truth to the matter, it was eventually discovered that arthritis was in fact the issue.

All of a sudden, there were some concerns surrounding Gurley, and whether he would return to the dominant level football fans were used to seeing since the running back looked like anything but himself in the two most important games of his career this past winter.

Even more concerning, the Rams will be getting training camp underway in a few weeks, and with Gurley working out on his own for the most part this offseason, no one truly knows what to expect from the Pro Bowl running back.

It would be one thing if Gurley’s knee had improved over the course of the offseason, but the fact that it’s the middle of July, and there’s still uncertainty should be viewed as a major concern for the Rams.

Looking back, it’s difficult not to play the “what if” game with Gurley’s contract since waiting another year most likely would have resulted in Los Angeles holding off on the hefty extension.

Not to mention, Gurley’s contract with the Rams was recently listed as the worst on the team by Bleacher Report, showing once again that maybe the team did in fact jump the gun last July on their decision.

Only time will tell when it comes to seeing if Gurley’s contract will end up being worth it for the Rams in the long run, but with the concerns from the previous few months, this contract decision may be one that ends up in the regret category.

But for the sake of the Rams continuing to be a serious contender in the NFC, here’s to hoping that Gurley finds a way to prove all of the doubters wrong by bouncing back strong in 2019 while remaining a top offensive threat in the process.