How Logan Bruss injury has blown up LA Rams roster plans for 2022

The LA Rams take meticulous and tedious care as to how the team prepares to restock the team’s roster. It’s not like taking a shopping trip, where you set a budget and stop buying when you run out of cash. The LA Rams‘ front office targets players who fit a specific profile, can project to the Rams roster’s highest and most immediate needs, and smooths out the peaks and valleys of the team’s contract timing for the foreseeable future.

It’s an intricate and complicated process, much like the method used by a web-spinning spider to reweave a new web. After it’s done, it appears incredibly simple. But the steps to recreate the web are extremely complex. Do one step wrong? The entire gossamer construct implodes.

That analogy is a bit like what is happening to the LA Rams roster right now. In theory, the presence of rookie Logan Bruss created enough overlap for offensive linemen to allow the Rams to cover two offensive line positions with just three players.

Logan Bruss was primarily projected to end up as the team’s backup right guard. Despite the enthusiasm expressed by the team upon his selection late in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft with the 104th overall pick, the Rams have not had a great deal of success with starting any rookies on the offensive line.

That explains why the Rams re-signed both Brian Allen and Coleman Shelton to multi-year deals in the off-season. Allen would start at center, and Shelton will start at right guard. For backup, Shelton would cover Allen at center, and Bruss would cover Shelton at right guard. But thanks to Bruss’s injury, the Rams’ plans to backup interior linemen may have been blown up to start all over again.

The LA Rams’ interest in setting undrafted rookie Jack Snyder as both center and right guard bodes well for his chances of making it to the team’s practice squad. And for depth, the Rams can repurpose versatile offensive lineman Tremayne Anchrum to backup at right guard, which would allow the Rams to cover both center and right guard positions with three players once more.

But Anchrum was shown to be backing up David Edwards at left guard on the LA Rams’ unofficial depth chart.

Before his injury, Bruss appeared to be struggling at his offensive lineman position. Of course, it didn’t help that he often faced NFL starters and key rotational players in preseason games. His injury was unexpected and will impact how the Rams go about creating acceptable depth for the offensive line for this season.