Cowherd on the release of
Todd Gurley.
“Last year Sean McVay would say ‘The reason we’re not using Todd Gurley is because I’m an idiot! Haha! This is all on me!’ – that was the ‘story’ the Rams were projecting. But I live in Los Angeles and know players and people on the staff. That wasn’t the REAL story. The story is that Todd Gurley got paid, Todd Gurley got hurt, and Todd Gurley changed. He’s not great for the locker room right now, and they wanted him out for a year and couldn’t figure out how to get rid of him. I've got intel on this. They don’t want him there… What was being said behind closed doors was ‘HOW DO WE GET OUT OF THIS CONTRACT?’”
Honestly I think there's an element of truth to this. I hate to say it. I really hate to say it. But go look at Todd's Twitter & IG feeds.
Look at what he posts. Todd has fast become a huge social media driver, he's one of the top 10 NFL players in social media reach -- his "reach" is currently 30 million (whatever that stat is). One of his last posts was some C.O.D. 4-man event he played with/against some other stars. He's regularly on
NBA podcasts.
Now, go look at AD99's. ya he's mad right now. Is Todd??? doesn't look like it. But look at AD99's twitter feed. It's full of FOOTBALL and WORKOUTS with KNIVES and crap like that. Ok he's launching is own line of workout clothes, and does other ads & such but at the end of the day AD99's life is about FOOTBALL.
"Todd Gurley changed". Yes, he did. Money does that to SOME people, not others. One of the last vids I saw on his feed, he was interviewed by some guy & told him he's been in the league 6 years now, while most player's average career span is 3.5 yrs. In dog years he's old, and he sounded like he felt it. By the end of that video it almost seemed to me like he was ready to retire & do something else.
Something happened to his knee (and the fallout surrounding it) which NO ONE on the Rams, not Todd, not McSnead, or anyone else has ever clearly explained. The interviewer in the aforementioned video even asked Todd how he deals with injuries & Todd came back with that quote about how long he's been playing. There's so much going on with him, his contract, his relationship with the Rams, how he really dealt with CJ being on the team to save the Ram's SB run, that we will NEVER know. Considerations such as cap hit numbers, comp picks lost, contract clauses etc. offer us no clues as to why he was released because, as fans, we really have no idea what's going on right now with him or McSnead. We're all just guessing here as to why our former All-Pro / OPOY RB was out-right released. Sure a huge part of it is his cap hit, but so is Jared's -- we didn't release him now, did we? so is AD99's & we didn't release him either.
The Ram culture is "we not me". I just don't think Todd was all in on that last season. It makes me think he deserved to have that "C" handed to someone else in the locker room. Yeah maybe he'll go all Rocky III on us & move to another team & find that "eye of the tiger" again, but he wasn't gonna do that as long as he was in La La Land.
But, I'll never forget what he gave us Rams fans. He was special. He really was.
