LA Rams wisely sign LB Anthony Hines to Reserve/Future contract

The LA Rams continue to tweak their roster with subtle additions. While many NFL teams add players to their summer rosters via Reserve/Future contract, the LA Rams are a bit more proactive and pragmatic. What do I mean?

It’s not always the headliner moves that win NFL Championships. Rather, it is the attention to the details, to the roster, to the opportunities that run all season long that simply create ways to improve the roster and by doing so improve the team’s chances to win games. The best place to improve the team is at the bottom end of the roster.

The Rams have made another move among those fringe players by signing ILB/OLB Anthony Hines to a Reserve/Future contract. So now that we know that he’s back on the LA Rams 2022 roster, what else should we know about him?

We know that he is on the LA Rams roster for the start of the 2022 NFL season.

LA Rams roster shallow at ILB

For starters, he is very similar in make-up to that of LA Rams versatile linebacker Justin Hollins. While Hollins is a bit larger at 6-foot-5 and 248-pounds, Anthony Hines is certainly no sapling at 6-foot-3 and 226-pounds. And it’s that ‘tweener’ height and weight that has driven Hines along the college football track to both the outside and inside linebacker positions.

He arrived in the NFL quite raw, as he missed his 2018 season with a lower leg injury, started for the Texas A&M Aggies in 2019, and sat out in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  He was signed after the 2021 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys. Failing to earn a spot on their roster, he later signed on with the LA Rams.

While he has yet to see playing time for the team, he certainly did enough to impress the team’s coaching staff to bring him back for another look. The Rams like longer inside linebackers, as they have a longer reach and can disrupt passing lanes. The Rams roster currently boasts Ernest Jones, Christian Rozeboom, and Anthony Hines as the three inside linebackers on the active roster. The team also has Antoine Brooks, who can flex between a hybrid safety/linebacker position that we affectionately call a Super-Saiyan role.

The Rams will almost certainly extend ILB Travin Howard to add another player to the position. But look for the team to draft an inside linebacker as well. That is doubly true if the team is unable to come to terms with ILB Troy Reeder in free agency.