Practice squads come with a trapdoor. Sign a player off another team's, and he has to occupy a spot on your 53. The Rams walked through it Tuesday, signing defensive back Maximus Pulley from Philadelphia's practice squad to the active roster and placing running back Ronnie Rivers on injured reserve to make room.
Pulley, a safety, arrives as depth for the back end. A rookie claimed off another team's practice squad in September isn't walking into a starting job. He's walking into a jobs program of coverage snaps and dime-package insurance, with the real evaluation happening on the practice field. The timing is the tell. Practice-squad poaching generally spikes in November and December, when attrition opens holes across the league. Doing it in Week 3 means Los Angeles looked at its own young safeties and wanted another option.
Rivers is the cost. Undrafted out of Fresno State in 2022, he worked his way into a rotational role in the backfield and onto coverage units, and the New York Post reported the injury is to his calf. Injured reserve shelves him for at least four games.
The backfield math matters more than the secondary math. Losing the third or fourth running back rarely alters a game plan, but it alters who covers kicks, and it alters how thin the Rams can afford to be if the backs ahead of Rivers tweak something in October. Replacing him with a practice-squad promotion is cheap and reversible. Signing a veteran off the street is neither.
Pulley, meanwhile, is a lottery ticket with a real cost attached: the Rams can't stash him on their own practice squad without exposing him to the same raid they just pulled on Philadelphia.
My read: the Rivers injury is the actual story here, and the Rams should treat the No. 3 running back job as an open tryout rather than a formality. If they promote from their own practice squad, they believe Rivers is back in November. If they sign a veteran in the next ten days, they don't.
