Anything was an overpay for Tre White, but the Rams had to give it a shot
There wasn’t anything wrong with the Rams signing Tre’Davious White, but the end result after Tuesday’s trade was an all-around negative for L.A.’s half-season experiment with the formerly good player.
The Rams paid White a one-year, $4.25 million contract with $3.25 million guaranteed at signing. White also received up to $1 million in per game roster bonuses, which is why the team started to deactivate him a month ago after four starts that made Derion Kendrick look like Jalen Ramsey.
Tre’Davious White this season in 4 games:
– 18 targets
– 12 completions
– 178 yards allowed
– 4 TDs
– 138.4 passer ratingTake it how you want, but if White doesn’t perform well you can always bench him. You only have up a 7th-round pick ♂️ pic.twitter.com/vasikMWKJj
— Tyler Barberis (@tylerbarberis_) November 5, 2024
Some fans are already claiming this a steal for the Baltimore Ravens because they essentially didn’t give up anything, swapping seventh round picks for the right to make the move. Many others know that the reason White didn’t cost anything to acquire is that there wasn’t anything to acquire.
The Rams could only do a physical on White when they paid him in March after a tremendously successful career on the Bills (I thought he deserved at least a few more votes for Defensive Player of the Year in 2019), they couldn’t work him out or see him in practice. What more would be expected of Les Snead than to take a chance on a cornerback who was available because of injuries, not because of a dip in performance?
$3 million isn’t that much
So to pay roughly $3 million en total for a gamble on Tre’Davious White, the Rams shouldn’t be faulted for that.
The end result is that he is just not the same Tre White and if the Rams were able to work him out and see him in practice, they probably wouldn’t have signed him at all. If they didn’t, someone else would have, and sometimes players do bounce back after injuries that appear to be career-ending.
The Rams could not afford to play White again after his first four starts and they didn’t get anything (they might be off the hook for about $700k in salary) to trade him away, but wasting money in the NFL is a very stupid thing to criticize. Everybody does it, everybody has to do it, and $3 million is not even the top-100 worst contracts in the league.
