Texans sign former Rams punter Donnie Jones

[Tampa_Ram]

A league source tells Florio that punter Donnie Jones has agreed to a one-year deal with the Houston Texans.
Jones, who turns 32 before the season, spent the last five years punting for the Rams. His 37.0 net average in 2011 was the worst of that tenure, and ranked 31st in the NFL.
The Texans are in search of competition and insurance for Brett Hartmann, who is coming off torn ACL and facing a three-game suspension to open the 2012 season.
Health allowing after the suspension ends, Hartmann shouldn’t struggle to beat out Jones.

[hill_Bartell=Probowl]

Here comes 7th round punter! Let's do it!

[timsum1283]

drew butler in the 7th?

[HUbison]

Bryan Anger, Drew Butler, Kyle Martans, Shaun Powell.....there's a few good choices in the draft.

Or maybe Fisher doesn't plan on punting this year.

[DE_Ramfan]

How did their punter get suspended?

[berg8309]

I disagree that he shouldn't struggle to beat out Jones. Whoever wrote that clearly only looked at last year, and not Jones overall body of work as one of the best punters in the NFL.

[viper]

That does give us the opportunity to look at punters in the draft. Up until 2011, I always thought that Donnie was pretty solid for us. It may have just been a bad year. I guess time will tell.

[general counsel]

I was hoping we would resign jones for reasonable money. Sure, he had a bad year. He also had some excellent years before last year. Huge money? No. But its not easy to get a punter on the cheap. I like butler from georgia a lot, and i think he won't be around anywhere remotely near the 7th round. If there is a punter that fisher really loves, i dont have any problem at all in the fourth or 5th round.

ramming speed to all

general counsel

[mde8352gorams]

My cynical nature has me worried how these FA's are leaving. Both Chamberlain and now Jones plus Manningham are "in discussions" with us and they jump to other teams supposedly mid-stream. Also Jason Jones was an ugly incident for a 1 year deal. I know I'm not privy to all the info I just don't like what I'm seeing. Now don't get me wrong, I have a world of faith in Jeff Fisher and his staff and I'm confident Snead knows what he's doing. I just don't like the way this is playing out.

On a positive note I do like the players we have signed such as Wells and Finnegan, although I think we are overpaying a bit for Finnegan. Nonetheless, 4 weeks to go.... I hope we stay away from a trade-up w/Cleveland, but I firmly believe this is lying season in the NFL, no comments are to taken too seriously.

Go Rams!

[sosa39rams]

My cynical nature has me worried how these FA's are leaving. Both Chamberlain and now Jones plus Manningham are "in discussions" with us and they jump to other teams supposedly mid-stream. Also Jason Jones was an ugly incident for a 1 year deal. I know I'm not privy to all the info I just don't like what I'm seeing. Now don't get me wrong, I have a world of faith in Jeff Fisher and his staff and I'm confident Snead knows what he's doing. I just don't like the way this is playing out.

On a positive note I do like the players we have signed such as Wells and Finnegan, although I think we are overpaying a bit for Finnegan. Nonetheless, 4 weeks to go.... I hope we stay away from a trade-up w/Cleveland, but I firmly believe this is lying season in the NFL, no comments are to taken too seriously.

Go Rams!

Brandon Carr's deal : 5 yrs, 50.1 mill
Cortland Finnegan's deal : 5 yrs, 50 mill
Carlos Roger's deal : 4 yrs, 29.3 mill
Terrell Thomas's deal : 4 yrs, 28 mill
Eric Wright's deal : 5 yrs, 37.5 mill


The 2 top CB's got the same pay. The others were all 2nd tier kind of guys and got around the same money. Considering the fact that Finnegan is better than Carr, and a lot better than Wright, I wouldn't say we overpaid. Asomugha last offseason signed a 5 year 60 million dollar deal. Finnegan is right up there with him.

[AvengerRam]

My cynical nature has me worried how these FA's are leaving. Both Chamberlain and now Jones plus Manningham are "in discussions" with us and they jump to other teams supposedly mid-stream.

Chamberlain, as far as I can tell, was not very hotly pursued.

Jones was, in all likelihood, looking for a multi-year deal, but there has been word of a some knee issues. The Rams signed Kendall Langford instead.

Manningham simply wanted to go to a playoff team.

[Rambos]

Jones hurts no doubt but we have to win the war not every battle...

[tomahawk247]

It's easy to lose your job as a punter when you keep punting directly to Patrick Peterson

[RockinRam]

I'm not getting too worked up. He was a good Ram, but c'mon. He's an above average punter. He's not that hard to replace.

[THOLTFAN81]

Im actually happy we can groom a punter now.