Ernest Jones worked as a linebacker regular for the Rams over the past two seasons, emerging as a potential extension candidate. But the Rams had not planned on making such a move this year. After a run of trade rumors, Jones is moving on.
The Rams are dealing Jones to the Titans, NFL.com’s Tom Pelissero tweets. Tennessee will acquire a proven starter in a contract year, with the Rams losing an experienced option shortly before a season with playoff expectations. This will be a pick-swap trade. The Rams will collect a fifth-round pick from the Titans for Jones and a sixth, per veteran Titans reporter Paul Kuharsky. The exchanged picks are 2026 selections, veteran reporter Jordan Schultz adds.
This comes after Jones delivered an impact performance for the 2023 Rams. The former third-round pick reeled off 145 tackles (14 for loss), 4.5 sacks and six passes defensed. The Rams perennially keep costs low at linebacker, but it is nevertheless interesting they are willing to move on from a productive young defender.
Pro Football Focus rated Jones 13th among off-ball ‘backers last season, viewing the Rams starter as strong as a run defender and a blitzer while lacking in coverage. Jones started all 15 games he played last season and lined up alongside Bobby Wagner for most of the 2022 season. The Rams moved on from Wagner after one year, and they will now be tasked with replacing Jones days before a season.
This swiftly developing storyline escalated this week, when the Rams gave Jones’ camp permission to seek a trade. Jones, 24, then made it clear he did not request to be moved. The Rams communicated with teams Monday, and a deal has come to pass. This will be an interesting addition to a Titans team that lost Azeez Al-Shaair in free agency. That came a year after David Long moved on (to the Dolphins). Jones soon stands to be a key piece in Dennard Wilson‘s defense.
Tennessee has now imported two Los Angeles-based starters this year, having already brought in ex-Chargers first-rounder Kenneth Murray. The team also rosters Jack Gibbens, a former UDFA who started 13 games last season. PFF ranked Gibbens 30th among ILBs last season; he made 95 tackles in 14 games. The Titans gave Murray a two-year, $15.5MM deal but structured the contract to make it fairly easy to move on after one season. With Jones in a contract year, the Titans may have some short-term solutions on their defensive second level. This move also comes after the Titans lost Chance Campbell to an ACL tear.
Although the Rams make a habit of generating solid play from lower-level investments, this does appear a bit of a gamble. Unlike when L.A. cut Wagner, it is coming off a postseason berth. Jones led Rams linebackers (by far) with 988 defensive snaps last season; Christian Rozeboom was second (with 579). PFF rated Rozeboom, a former UDFA, 79th at the position in 2023. Another undrafted player, rookie Omar Speights, has impressed to the point he will make Los Angeles’ roster, with The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue connecting this and a willingness to move on from Jones (subscription required).
The Titans will have exclusive negotiating rights with Jones until March, leaving them time to evaluate this fit. The Rams were not eyeing a 2024 deal with Jones, but a team that gave up at least one to-be-determined asset for him may be more inclined to discuss an extension.
Trading him is one thing, but to get next to nothing in return from one of their only known quantities on defense is surprising.
Titans loading up for the Bears! LOL
They’re going to need more than Ernest plays football
I know that I’m in the minority, but I’ve always felt that Snead really is not very talented as a GM. The only moves he seems to excel at are the big name, big ticket (in other words, the obvious) items. I don’t understand why he is so averse to extending homegrown players who are solid contributors but not major stars. Johnson is another example from several years ago, in my mind. He’s fallen off at this current point, but back then, he was a great safety who was a big part of their Super Bowl run. The Rams’ defense isn’t nearly as talented as that team was. Jones is not going to command a huge salary, and he’s an unheralded pick who has become one of their best defenders. Why not sign him-and better yet, why completely even just shut the door on considering it (I guess due to his position), as Snead announced that he would? It’s just shortsighted. Good players are good players, no matter where they play.
This is a great deal for Tennessee, and I honestly think that that’s the bigger story. Vrabel’s later Titans squads saw a big step back from their interior tacklers at the linebacker spot, and that was a huge reason that their run defense (and consequently, their overall defense) suffered a downturn in his final year. Jones is a good tackler and smart player who will probably not be a star, but will be a solid contributor as a clean up player in the middle.
Who is the Johnson you were referring to?
Your takes on Les are laughable. First off Joshnson was not on their Super Bowl team. He signed with the Browns before and was cut by them after two seasons. He is now a league minimum player so how was that a bad decision? Les perfectly brought back the Rams after their 2022 fall off with a perfect retool. Is getting 4 legit starters from the 2023 draft without a first rounder not good enough? Drafting the best WR in the class with a 5th round pick is not very talented? And their 2024 class looks just as good with Verse and Fisk remaking the dline and Whittington looking like another WR steal. I hate the return for Ernest but his position is not valuable at all. You can find a reliable ILB in your sleep.
Johnson was a leader on the 2018 Rams Super Bowl team. They went twice, you know. Johnson was good for another four years after being let go. He was a good player that Snead didn’t extend because he was not a star.
Look, I know you’re a Rams fan, but you have to see some bias at play, here. People think that they can find any position “in their sleep” until they can’t. Good players are good players, and you should keep them when you can afford them. Snead breaks the bank for stars, but won’t extend a cheap defender who he drafted and the team developed just because he’s an off-ball linebacker? He won’t even engage in talks at all? That’s silly, and it’s quite frankly really arrogant to assume that every player in the draft is equivalent.
The only article I could find that speaks ill of Jones is, unsurprisingly, from Rams Wire. They say in it that Jones ranked 30th out of 32 linebackers accord to PFF. Coincidentally, this was an article published right after Snead announced that he had no interest in extending Jones. Just a month earlier there’s another Rams Wire article, titled “Ernest Jones deserves more respect as one of the top linebackers in the NFL”. It cites PFF again, but this time ranks him more highly using different stats. Whatever team you root for, there is going to be some pro-team propaganda that gets put out, granted, but that’s quite the 360 to pull just to support the official line. Snead dismisses his foundation too early, and is only capable of making big, expensive maneuvers on a regular basis. If bringing a team back perfectly involves what we’re seeing now, then sure, you’re right. But the whole reason that the team fell off was that Snead doesn’t build rosters that well. He’s average.
That’s why he’s so desperate to trade his picks for other teams’ players-he doesn’t consistently generate them himself, and if he does, he lets them go. If the Panthers had been halfway intelligent, L.A. would be down two more firsts, plus others, for a player who’s never been in the top three in the league in sacks and costs a top tier contract. If Snead had gotten his way in this draft, he’d have never drafted those as of yet unproven players that you say are great pieces. He tried to trade up, twice, and failed. Fate pushed him into those decisions, not preference.
You basically answered your own issues with the trade. He is an off ball linebacker. The Rams do think they have a replacement in Speights. My preference would have been let Ernest go in frer agency rather than trade him but it’s not that big a deal if they wanted him out of the building. As for JJIII when does paying big money for a safety ever work out? Jesse Bates has but he’s one of the top guys in the league. JJ was not and he got cut halfway through the deal for underperformance. 2022 was a disaster due to injuries not letting players go. Mainly the Oline which caused McVay to change his scheme to rely more on big guards. It is easy for the Rams because they have proven to be the best drafting team in football from rounds 3-7. You can’t name a single team that finds more productive players at the middle rounds than them. Yes their priority was Bowers and not Verse. But when they couldn’t trade up the pivot they made was brilliant. Fisk looks like a monster and trading a 2nd this year to make that move is inconsequential.
First off, I’d like to put out there that my lukewarm opinion on Snead does not extend to his coach. McVay is a great head man in L.A. He’s made a lot of offense work after losing stars (occasionally due to injury driven or age driven ineffectiveness or retirement) and kept the offense running overall pretty well in spite of it. Guys like peak Gurley, Whitworth, and even Goff can be hard to replace. Lesser known players like Cooks, Everett, or Woods also play important roles in the offense in their respective capacities. A lot of backs have stepped in, too, from Akers to Henderson to now Williams, and the offense worked.i have a lot of respect for that.
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t how Snead not retaining any of these players and always starting over with random midround picks helps McVay at all. Snead already has tried to get rid of Stafford several times, by trade or by redoing the contract, since handing him that extension. Sure, Stafford is getting older and has injury issues, but he is the Rams’ unquestioned offensive leader and is vitally important to running it. Most importantly, nobody forced Snead to give him that contract if he was going to try to dump it immediately afterward.
Remember, Snead didn’t just show up with McVay. He’s been the Rams’ GM for twelve years, since 2012. In the years before McVay showed up in 2017, Snead made 17 first or second round picks. Of those, Donald was clearly the best. Brockers, Goff, Gurley, Havenstein, and Ogletree were pretty good picks. Jenkins was, as well, but he did most of his career outside of St. Louis (he was long gone by the time they moved to L.A.). Everett, as I discussed, was a solid contributor, but definitely overdrafted for how he ended up being used. Rapp had one, possibly two, years where he got enough use as a decent box safety, and is on another roster. The other picks weren’t great. Even of these good picks (I’ll give Rapp and Everett credit), how many even got a second contract with the Rams? Gurley did, but he immediately succumbed to his well documented injury concerns (there was a player that Snead SHOULD have cut ties with), Goff did but was traded, Ogletree did but was traded, and the others didn’t. Ogletree got the Rams a fourth and sixth, but also cost them a seventh. Goff netted Were they better uses of money than Johnson? Maybe, but Gurley sure wasn’t despite his immense value to the offense, his lengthy injury history was very well documented and a lot of people voiced concern even at the time. If we’re going to say, “oh, we can’t pay an off-ball linebacker, they’re a dimd a dozen” or “we can’t pay a safety, they never work out” then pay a heavily injured veteran back a big extension and say, “well, we had idea that this could happen.”
Before McVay arrived, Snead had a record of 31-48 in five seasons. He never oversaw a single winning season, or even a .500 season. Every single one was a losing season, with a winning percentage of 39%. Of course, those games came with Jeff Fisher as a head coach, so I realize that he had a negative impact as well. However, that’s five years of being able to draft and add free agents or do whatever Snead can to improve his team. If he were a brilliant GM, as some would claim, you’d think that the Rams could eaked out at least one more win in any of their 7-9 seasons to at least make it to .500. Five years is enough for an entire rookie class to finish their respective contracts and sign extensions. It’s certainly enough time to make an impact as your team’s top, or second from the top, football decision maker.
Fisher has had winning seasons in the past, too, and a winning record overall, so as mediocre as he was a coach, he couldn’t have the sole and only reason that those teams failed. I don’t disagree at all that he fell off and was a bad coach, but if Snead truly was a top end GM, they could have managed at least one winning season. Worse coaches and worse teams have done so in a lesser amount of time. In fact, most unsuccessful combinations don’t even get that long. They certainly don’t get a second chance with a new coach. I know that Kroenke was gearing up for the move to L.A., and probably wanted or didn’t care that the team stunk, but Snead was either unable to improve it or was complicit in allowing it to be bad. For a year or two, to tank, sure, GMs have done that before. For five? That’s a bit much.
It seems pretty apparent to me that the Rams made a great hire with McVay. Snead is middle tier GM, generously considered, with a top tier coach. That’s how I see it. I just don’t see how McVay couldn’t do better paired with a more forward thinking and consistent general manager. It seems to me that Snead holds McVay back more than helps him and the Rams, and the superb coaching system is what prevents the player management from dropping to its Fisher era mediocrity.
The biggest knock on Snead was an inability to find a franchise QB. You cant evaluate him for 4 years in St Louis when he had instructions above him to tank and get the team to LA. I dont have much faith in Snead if the Rams ever needed a franchise QB. I have tremendous faith in him at every other position on the field. Not singing players to second contracts does not mean they are not worth it. Look at their 2018 class. No pick until round 3 and more than half of them got major second contracts. Belichick had that same attitude for years to never pay when the bag is due. Constantly replenishing is a strategy a lot of teams use. He is not a top 3 GM but he absolutely is top 5. How many teams have multiple super bowl trips in the past decade? You cant with a straight face tell me someone like the Buffalo Bills GM is better while his team constantly cant get over the hump while having more regular season success.
Brandon Beane has been the GM in Buffalo for seven years, five fewer years than Snead. If, after twelve years, he also hasn’t even gone to the Super Bowl, then I might agree. Until then, he has a full rookie contract plus a year behind Snead in terms of longevity.
Whether Snead “had orders” to tank for five years straight doesn’t really matter to me, honestly. Maybe tanking for a year or two could be strategic, but tanking for five years (again, more than the length of a rookie contract) doesn’t make sense. This is especially true because it’s not like the Rams got a bunch of picks out of it, like Miami, Houston, or Cleveland. They didn’t even end up with a top three pick most of the time-three of those seasons were 7-9. Even after tanking, they had to trade high level picks just to move up for Goff.
Ironically, the only trade where Snead received a bunch of high picks was early on, when Washington traded a king’s ransom to get RGIII. Brockers came out of that haul, and was a great player for a long time. Ogletree did too, as a later pick. Jenkins wasn’t retained, despite being very good, and the other picks were actual busts (Isaiah Pead, Rokevious Watkins, Stedman Bailey, Zac Stacey, Greg Robinson). It was a potentially franchise-changing haul, but Snead only got two long term players out of it. That’s pretty disappointing. Sure, he may have “orders” to tank, but whether he purposefully picked bad players, purposefully didn’t extend them, or did so out of his incompetence, he still did it.
Obviously the purpose of this tanking wasn’t to improve the team-the Rams were bad after the RGIII trade, and five years is more than enough time to pick rookies and develop them or to accrue picks. We can’t pretend that those first five years just don’t count. Either Snead was horribly incompetent or he was complicit in his boss’ plan to stink for some non-football purpose.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. You make good points, but I’m not convinced that they override the weight of the argument against Snead.
I feel like eating a protein bar