LA Rams Lance McCutcheon must show more, and that means trouble

The LA Rams have tough choices in the weeks ahead. There are NFL teams that are prepared to claim and perhaps eventually start wide receivers who cannot make the LA Rams roster, so the upcoming roster cuts to 85, and eventually to 53, are going to be incredibly strategic. The LA Rams, like 31 other NFL teams, can only carry 53 players on the team’s active roster.

So those NFL teams whose roster has glaring holes at wide receiver (I’m looking at the Baltimore Ravens) will be more than happy to shop the LA Rams waiver wire.

And so, the sudden emergence of UDFA WR Lance McCutcheon is a double-edged sword. You love to see it because he is truly showing the promise of becoming a significant contributor to the LA Rams roster at some point in the future. But meanwhile, it appears that the LA Rams may be facing a game of musical chairs.

If you seat Cooper Kupp, Allen Robinson, Van Jefferson, Tutu Atwell, Ben Skowronek, and Brandon Powell in the standard 6 slots on the active roster for the wide receiver group, then you’ve either got to expand the number of receivers added to the roster or cut a player who will undoubtedly be scooped up elsewhere. Right now, Lance McCutcheon is forcing the Rams’ hand at carrying one more WR.

Rams roster: Lance McCutcheon may need to do more

Lance McCutcheon (see story link featuring him here) has shown enough to earn a spot on an NFL roster. The problem is that I don’t think that he’s done enough to warrant a spot on the LA Rams roster. Not yet. In my opinion, he has. In my assessment of how these LA Rams run things, he hasn’t. Not quite yet.

That is not to say that I don’t love the guy. I love what he showed in his first preseason game. But did he simply win the luck of the draw and play against inferior competition? In the preseason, players can appear to be superheroes in one week, but like mere mortals the next, all thanks to who they are facing. McCutcheon played incredibly in his first preseason game. But one game does not make a trend.

For the record, McCutcheon shows every indication of succeeding in the NFL. He’s big. He’s strong. He gets open. He has soft hands. But most of all, any pass thrown near him is a pass that he claims for his own. He works hard on the practice field, thinks hard in the meeting room, and ensures that he sits close to both Cooper Kupp and Allen Robinson.

Ultimately, the goal for Lance McCutcheon is to play football, wherever that may be. But in just one game, he’s done enough to show up on the radar of each and every NFL team If he is cut with the hope of sliding him to the team’s practice squad, another team will surely scoop him up. If the Rams keep him, then he will bump a player who the Rams are keen on as well.

Has he done enough to make the Rams’ 53-man roster yet? Perhaps not. Perhaps so. But to leave no shadow of a doubt, McCutcheon will need to perform in the same electrifying fashion in one more preseason game. If he performs as well once more, then he will have earned the right to remain on the LA Rams roster.

But another Rams player will be cut, and claimed, instead.