Situation Impossible: Replacing Robert Quinn

Situation Impossible is a weekly column focusing on the most devastating injury of the week in the NFL. "Next Man Up" is a catchy phrase, but some players are harder to replace than others. Here we investigate the alternatives on hand and how a team reacted or will react to having to replace star-level performance.

Injured player: Robert Quinn, star edge rusher for the Rams. We've had a lot to talk about with that team this week, huh?

Injury and diagnosis: Good question. Quinn was placed on IR and will need back surgery. What that actually means, we're not really sure of at this point.

Quinn needs season-ending back surgery.

— Jim Thomas (@jthom1)December 9, 2015

Quinn has missed time due to a hip injury that was also undisclosed, too. Sometimes teams are just good at stonewalling reporters, and the Rams are one of the first teams I think of in that regard.

Obviously, back surgery is a pretty big deal regardless of the actual issue. So here we are.

What's missing: Quinn is, simply put, one of the five best pass rushers in the NFL. He led the league in sacks in 2013. He put up five sacks in eight games this year, despite playing through discomfort.

Since Robert Quinn got dinged up in Week 8, the — Jeff Ratcliffe (@JeffRatcliffe)December 8, 2015

The four worst pass defense DVOA games of St. Louis's season have come in the past five weeks, all without Quinn. Aaron Donald is a beast, but he can't carry a pass rush all on his own. The list of players that can do that is pretty much exclusively J.J. Watt.

What the team will do: Former No. 2 overall pick Chris Long returned to the lineup in Week 11 after missing most of the year following ankle surgery. That has slid backups William Hayes and Eugene Sims back into place for Quinn. There's not much extra to be done here, finally—the Rams simply elevate a new player to the roster to replace Quinn.

As far as the rest of this season goes, well, they probably will allow more points. Luckily, the offense is a disaster and is now coordinated by the tight ends coach, so no one will notice.

Adjusting our expectations: The Rams are pretty bad and unlikely to make the playoffs. Losing Quinn to IR wasn't the deathblow to this team, but only because not having him for the past month has already killed them. This is a procedural move along the lines of "Stop, stop, he's already dead!"

The long-term is a more interesting question. Quinn got one of the more impressive contracts of the past few seasons, after his breakout 2013 campaign.

There's nothing that we know of from this back injury that will threaten Quinn's career just yet, but the contract was pretty well designed in case something like this happened. The Rams can save some cap space getting out of it in 2016, and most of the contract will be non-guaranteed in 2017.

In the meantime, I'll refrain from wild speculation and stick with this: the Rams absolutely need a healthy Robert Quinn to contend next season. Whatever the nature of this back injury is, if it threatens the beginning of the 2016 season in any way, it's going to be a problem for the Rams.

St. Louis has a lot of questions to answer heading into 2016. They last thing they need is for one of their sure things to shift into that column.