Has this LA Rams defensive starter played his last game in horns?

The LA Rams have been losing offensive linemen by the droves this season, but the injury outbreak that has plagued the team has not impacted many other positions on the Rams roster. Well, more like hadn’t. In recent weeks, the Rams have lost their starting quarterback Matthew Stafford, their best receiver in Cooper Kupp, and have cut their best running back Darrell Henderson Jr. after knee soreness limited his use in Week 11.

Just par for the course for this season it seems.

So here we are, no longer keying our anticipation over the final score from the latest score of the Rams game, but training our eyes over injury reports and post-game recaps. This is not fun. In fact, it’s closer to horrifying. Players on the LA Rams roster are getting injured, seriously injured, at an incomprehensible rate. That has been happening at a rate of two players injured per game.

Has this ever happened to the Rams before?

Well, not to LA Rams defensive lineman A’Shawn Robinson. Robinson is a throwback to another era of defensive lineman, a player whose value peaked at a time when being a blocker gobbler was a coveted and prestigious role for a defensive lineman. He is the antithesis of offensive linemen everywhere who pride themselves on being a road-grader. Robinson is that cement pylon that shatters snow blades, the concrete buttress that destroys the front end of speeding vehicles.

He is an immovable object.

Rams roster sends DL to IR, then to NFL FA?

But now, he is moving, to the sideline. And per the sound of it, he is done for the season, and perhaps for the LA Rams chapter of his NFL career.

While no diagnosis can occur without injury specifics, the recovery time for a meniscus injury can be up to three months for the injury itself. Afterward, there is a bit of rehab to restore strength and flexibility to the joint.  The process of rehabilitating the injured knee can take up to six months from the date of the surgery.

With the injury occurring in late November, that translates into April 2023 before he is back to try out for teams. The new NFL season begins at 1:00 pm PT on March 15, 2023. So the initial wave of signing NFL Free Agents may not include A’Shawn Robinson if he is not medically cleared. But he soon will be, and he is definitely the type of player that wise defensive coordinators will covet.

The likely course for DT A’Shawn Robinson is to IR for the Rams, and then to test the NFL FA Market. Will the Rams extend him? We’ve witnessed the challenges to do so with the way the Rams handled the free agency of WR Odell Beckham Jr., and everyone on the team lobbied hard to re-sign OBJ.

Robinson is far more valuable to this defense than many realize. Even as other defenses in the NFL were decimated by power running, the Rams’ defense held fast. The Rams’ rushing defense is currently the fourth-ranked rushing defense in the NFL.

Well, look for that to regress significantly without A’Shawn Robinson. Will the LA Rams try to re-sign A’Shawn Robinson? I don’t know the answer. But I do know that more than one NFL team would love to sign A’Shawn Robinson to a new contract to play for their team.

And on this occasion, no awarded compensatory pick can make up for losing the Rams blocker gobbler.