LA Rams: 3 reasons team is playing percentages on Robert Woods trade

The LA Rams appear, on paper, to be trading a wide receiver coming off an ACL injury in Robert Woods, and welcoming a wide receiver who is not in Allen Robinson. But that is not truly the case. In fact, if you play at the wide receiver position for the LA Rams, odds are better than 50/50 that you’ve suffered an ACL injury in your football career.

A curious story from NBC Sports Chicago raised the ACL injury about Allen Robinson in 2017 and did a rather nicely organized presentation about how the track record of injuries for athletes in his age bracket had a rather positive track record. That article seemed to conclude that ACL injuries for receivers are nothing to be overly concerned about unless the wide receiver is 30 years of age. Robert Woods will be 30 years old on April 10, 2022.

The article gave me an idea, a bit of inspiration for a way to digest the sudden collapse of my optimism in trading away Robert Woods to a contender, the Tennessee Titans, for nothing more than a sixth-round pick, in the 2023 NFL Draft, no less. If the Chicago Bears and fans were concerned about Allen Robinson’s ACL injury in 2017, then is that part of the reason why the Rams are less than 100 percent completely confident in his recovery?

Rams rehabbing  bring risks

The team did just get RB Cam Akers back to the roster after a devastating Achilles Tendon injury. While he looks the part and passed the optics test to the team’s coaching staff, he has yet to explode for a big game on the football field. Coincidence? Offensive line? Or is something more afoot, something about the way he no longer plants his foot and pivots on a dime? Was it all bad timing, or will the Rams be fielding a lesser running back in the future?

So many questions. If they are running through my mind, then surely they are coming up in conversations in the LA Rams Ready Room. Uncomfortable conversations that begin easily enough with how the team can improve?  But by the discussions become granular, down to either player A or player B, they are downright painful.

Perhaps it’s just fitting in a year after the team parts ways to the release of long-time punter Johnny Hekker, to the retiring Andrew Whitworth and Eric Weddles of the world, that the team is trading Robert Woods as well.  But might there be more to it, a cumulative pattern of events that led to this outcome?  Let’s explore some events: