Leonard Floyd on pace for career year with Los Angeles Rams

Leonard Floyd is on pace for a career year with the Los Angeles Rams.

The Los Angeles Rams’ roster seemed to have a pretty clear weakness heading into the 2020 season on the defensive side of the ball — edge rusher.

As it turns out, the cast of characters the Rams have assembled on their defensive front seven — including off the edge — have been a winning and fruitful combination of players.

One of the players the Rams added to the fray off the edge was former Chicago Bears first-round pick Leonard Floyd, a player whose time with the Bears was highlighted by a seven-sack season as a rookie in only 12 games.

From that point on, the speed and burst Floyd showed off the edge was not resulting in sacks at a high enough rate. He had just 11.5 sacks between 2017-19, hardly the type of production the Bears had expected of a first-round draft choice.

Chicago didn’t pick up his fifth-year option, let him hit free agency, and he reunited with former Bears and Broncos assistant coach Brandon Staley in Los Angeles with the Rams, where Staley had become the defensive coordinator.

With a clear path to significant snaps and a one-year, $10 million to prove himself to the Rams and the rest of the NFL, Floyd had put his foot on the gas.

Against his former team, Floyd racked up a pair of sacks and three total quarterback hits. He has nine quarterback hits on the season and four sacks total, both good for second on the team behind the best defensive player in the universe, Aaron Donald.

Floyd’s tremendous pressure off the edge against Chicago showed not only that the first-round ability as a pass rusher is still there, but perhaps time and a change of scenery was all he needed to realize his potential.

As unfortunate as that is for the Bears, it’s great to see that Floyd is not accepting the first four years of his career as ‘as good as it gets’.

He’s taken it upon himself to get better, and some who cover the Bears opined after the Monday night contest that it may have been the best all-around game Floyd has played in the NFL overall.

Just under halfway through the season, Floyd is on pace to set career-highs in sacks, QB hits, and total pressures. He’s also playing a career-high 92 percent of the Rams’ defensive snaps so far, showing that he’s not just a pure speed guy off the edge. He can play all three downs.

The Rams took a calculated but pricey risk by signing Floyd this offseason. So far, it’s paid off in a big way for everyone involved.