Really nice Dotson breakdown

[AvengerRam]

Rob Havenstein

9 seasons
130 regular season starts (out of 147 games)
11 playoff starts, including 2 Super Bowls
35 penalties in 8,881 career snaps
Starter on 5 Top 10 offenses
Yeah…get rid of the bum!

 

[dieterbrock]

Rob Havenstein

9 seasons
130 regular season starts (out of 147 games)
11 playoff starts, including 2 Super Bowls
35 penalties in 8,881 career snaps
Starter on 5 Top 10 offenses
Yeah…get rid of the bum!

14 mill cap hit in 2024
11 mill cap hit in 2025
For starting vet RT, that's extremely affordable

 

[Merlin]

Yep. This is how you stick around with the Rams. By not getting overpaid. They are quick to rectify those particular mistakes.

 

[tempests]

Rob Havenstein

9 seasons
130 regular season starts (out of 147 games)
11 playoff starts, including 2 Super Bowls
35 penalties in 8,881 career snaps
Starter on 5 Top 10 offenses
Yeah…get rid of the bum!

Havenstein has given the Rams the most consistency and stability at that position since Jackie Slater.

My problem with Havenstein is his play. This is a pass heavy offense and pass protection has always been his weakness. Havenstein has always been a run blocking type of RT which is what "old school" RTs were. That was fine when they had Gurley as their RB and the offense was more run heavy. But now the run game is designed to open up the passing game with an inside run attack. This is a different offense than Sean ran with Gurley which was a perimeter run game.

They are overpaying Havenstein simply because they needed stability on the OL and the rest of the OL was a mess. But now this OL is much better and I would prefer to allocate those cap dollars to someone like Dotson. This is the financial reality we are talking about. Who is worth more a top run blocking RG for a run game that is designed to run inside or a limited RT who is fine in run blocking but struggles to pass protect?

Our offense has done very well with Havenstein blocking for us, up until the present day. RT was a persistent hole in the Rams starting lineup from the end of the GSOT era until Havenstein took over. Those 15 years were filled with first round underachievers who couldn't make at LT (Alex Barron, Jason Smith) to other teams castoffs (Barry Richardson, Joe Barksdale).

Your proposed solutions would make right tackle an annual problem again.