Why NFL Teams Are Skeptical About the Rams

Tom Pelissero landed on his feet, which Rich established by way of a bit about naming every cat in the NFL. Bengals, Lions, Jaguars, Panthers, and then Pelissero, now of Netflix Sports and The Ringer, calling in ahead of a Rams and 49ers opener in Melbourne that he will be working at breakfast time.

He arrived in the middle of the show's fantasy draft and got handed a scoop for his trouble. TJ Jefferson took Christian McCaffrey third overall, leaving Chase and Puka on the board, on the logic that a point per reception makes McCaffrey's rushing and receiving yards count twice. Pelissero was texted the pick and announced it on air, then got asked the only follow-up that mattered. Is McCaffrey healthy?

His read was reassuring without being definitive, which is the honest version. Everything McCaffrey has said points to a plan of ramping up, resting, ramping up again. He is famously private about his health and dislikes being on the injury report at all. "It really doesn't seem like there's any types of alarm bells going off right now around McCaffrey." The genuine unknown is usage, given how unusual Week 1 is inside a very long season.

The rest of the San Francisco injury list is more crowded. George Kittle made the trip and has been ahead of schedule the entire way back from an Achilles tear, "bound and determined to play in week one." Nick Bosa has had time and had been managing swelling, and seems in a good place to play. Pelissero offered the number that frames the matchup: thirteen 49ers on the report against three Rams, which he noted should surprise nobody by historical standards. Outside of Ricky Pearsall, none of it looks long term.

Then Aaron Donald, the question the show has been asking on a loop.

Nothing is finalized, and Pelissero expects caution, partly for a reason that has nothing to do with the knee. The 49ers already made the trip. The Rams are flying in and essentially playing the same day, taking off Wednesday, landing Thursday, for a game that is Friday morning in Melbourne. What follows is a ramp-up, because there is almost no precedent for this. A player missing multiple seasons, retiring, coming back and playing: Pelissero noted Deion Sanders is the only pro football Hall of Famer since World War II to do it.

So the target is modest and surgical. "The target for Donald is probably a couple dozen plays whenever he makes his debut, whether that's week one or week two," concentrated on third downs, pass rush situations and two-minute. Which sets up the detail Pelissero clearly enjoyed most. For the first time in his career, Donald may not be the man getting doubled. Coordinators looking at Myles Garrett, Kobe Turner and Byron Young might decide to "single the old guy until he makes us do otherwise." As Pelissero put it, "Aaron Donald's never seen that before, and he might get his opportunity."

On Christian Gonzalez, Pelissero confirmed the part that reframes the standoff. Robert Kraft has said, and Pelissero is told it is absolutely true, that New England offered to make Gonzalez the highest paid corner in the NFL. That offer is not new. "This has been the case for 6 months," adjusted along the way as other deals landed. Gonzalez is not taking it. He shares an agent with Devon Witherspoon, whose Seattle deal also dragged past expectations.

Pelissero's own math argues for signing. Gonzalez is under team control for roughly four more years once you stack the fourth year, the option and two franchise tags, so "it's not like you're going to be able to move the market that much." He has looked great since returning to practice, and his press conferences convey frustration. "I think it gets done, but I also thought that it was going to get done over the past several weeks."

C.J. Stroud is a different animal, and Pelissero was careful to kill the popular framing. This is not a quarterback rejecting an offer out of pique. "It's a negotiation. You're going back and forth. They're just not there yet." What is actually driving it is 2027. With Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and Bo Nix all up, and Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield still unsigned, Pelissero thinks the market may explode to "a $70 million a year market next year." A quarterback offered a deal priced off three seasons, including a playoff game Pelissero called a complete mess, may reasonably decide to play it out.

He gave Houston's side of it too, and it is not disrespect. Pay early and you protect yourself against the spike, but if you are not fully sold and the play does not spike, you end up like Miami or Arizona did, eating money to move on. "They wouldn't make him an offer at all if they didn't want him to be the starting quarterback." Pelissero's broader point is that an unusual number of teams have no quarterback committed for 2027, which he expects to produce quarterback chaos that offseason.

On Josh Jacobs, Pelissero was blunt about the Packers' visibility. "They do not know, and that is the honest truth." Green Bay had hoped that reduced charges, two misdemeanors with the felony not pursued, would put Jacobs on the field while the case played out. The league went the other way, and Pelissero explained why: the police report references a tape of the incident, and the league moved to protect itself against what that tape might show.

The timing is the problem. The next hearing is not until mid-November, which creates a situation nobody should want. "What no one should want, the league, the union, anybody else, is a player being forced to, for instance, take a plea deal when they feel like they're not guilty of a crime just to get themselves back onto the field." He cited Jabrill Peppers as a case reinstated with the legal matter unresolved, while stressing no two situations are alike. For now Green Bay opens in Minnesota with a committee of MarShawn Lloyd, Chris Brooks and Caleb Johnson.

Patrick Mahomes drew the most detailed answer of the hour, starting with a caveat. Andy Reid has not even confirmed Mahomes is starting Week 1. Everything else points to him playing.

Pelissero did not soften the injury. An ACL and LCL is what Robert Griffin III had, what Carson Wentz had, and those can be long-term problems. What makes Mahomes unusual is the clock. He had the ACL reconstructed the night it happened, hours after the game, rather than waiting weeks for swelling to subside. It is a nine-month injury, and Monday night against Denver is almost exactly nine months. Add the history, the dislocated kneecap that cost him about a game, the ankles in a Super Bowl year, and you get a player who has always pushed through.

His conclusion was firm. Kansas City will be careful about exposure, and there may be calls they hold back while he finds his footing, but the framing matters. "If he's on the field, he's out there not because they think he's 85%. He's all the way back."

Asked which team the league is quietly high on, Pelissero started with the team nobody is quiet about and flipped it. Around the league there is real skepticism about the Rams. Not dismissal, a prove-it posture. Can they stop the run? Do all these older players hold up? Dream team constructions tend to make the rest of the sport bristle, and Pelissero pointed to a Seahawks safety posting after Donald's return to the effect of, all this for us? Seattle won the Super Bowl, won the division, was the one seed, and the Rams are the ones sitting at plus 500.

That became his sleeper. "I think that Seattle isn't being talked about enough, even though contextually I understand why." He acknowledged the losses, Kenneth Walker III, who was the Super Bowl MVP, and Boye Mafe to Cincinnati, plus another player headed to Chicago and out for a good chunk of the year. Against that: "Mike Macdonald knows what he's doing on defense. They're going to be one of the best defenses in the NFL year in and year out." Sam Darnold is healthier than he was during the Super Bowl run, and a group of young players they like takes another step.

He had two more nobody is discussing. Minnesota won nine games with a quarterback room in chaos, beat Detroit on Christmas Day with undrafted rookie Max Brosmer throwing for about 52 yards, and still has Brian Flores running the defense. And Washington, sitting at a five and a half win over under eighteen months after an NFC Championship game appearance, gets a healthy Jayden Daniels with time on task alongside Terry McLaurin, who held in all last year, and Stefon Diggs, who Pelissero says can still play. "I just wouldn't be surprised if we're talking in the opening weeks of the season like, oh yeah, Jayden Daniels is a pretty good quarterback."

When Rich pushed back on the Rams skepticism as possible wishcasting, Pelissero made the structural case instead. The genuine risk is age. Matthew Stafford is 40, and McVay has admitted they doubted he would play at all last season because of his back, before he went out and won MVP. Donald is 36 and has not played in two years. Garrett is on the other side of 30. Davante Adams is getting toward the end. The young core is real, Puka Nacua, Kyren Williams, Kobe Turner and Byron Young among them, but "when some of your crucial players are a little bit older, it does create that environment where if anybody declines, if anybody gets banged up, the expectations can change really quickly."

He also flagged the tell in their draft. Los Angeles did everything to go all in for 2026 except take Ty Simpson in the first round, and the logic there is a hedge. This group will never pick high enough to land a quarterback, so take the one you like now for a possible reset later.

Which brought him to the observation that may define the season. Look at the Super Bowl odds and the AFC contenders all made huge changes or were not good last year. "The top teams, I believe, are the Bills, the Ravens, and the Chiefs. Two of those teams fired their head coaches after last season, and the Chiefs went 6 and 11." After years of it's the Chiefs until it's not, "the AFC feels completely wide open outside of a couple of teams. It's kind of anybody's game." Making playoff predictions, he said, you keep running out of room for teams you cannot justify leaving out.

As for Melbourne, Pelissero has done the homework, including an hour with the local Chamber of Commerce, from which he emerged with the correct pronunciation, a briefing on the first peoples of Australia, and the single most relevant fact available: at a cricket ground around 170 years old holding over 100,000 people, alcohol sales begin at 6:30 in the morning, four hours before kickoff. Netflix has him outside with that crowd alongside Clay Matthews, Nick Foles and Michael Irvin. He has requested at least one hit from inside it.

He wants two things out of the trip. "I want to participate in a smoke ceremony, and I want to hold a koala." His own odds on those: one of the two, probably. "I might need to work on the koala."