Sully Says He’d Rather Not Sign With the Rams Again

None of the National Football League’s featured performers lost sleep when the owners dropped the active roster from 49 players back to 45 this year. The squeeze was on certain players who were surviving on their special team skills.

On the Rams, Ivory Sully is a seventh-year pro listed as a safety but best known for blocking kicks. Mike McDonald is listed as a linebacker, but the Rams signed him out of fireman’s school before the 1983 playoffs just to snap the ball for kicks.

Now they’re breaking in a better linebacker, Ed Brady, as the kick snapper, and Sully is part of a defensive backfield that is the most talented unit on the team. There doesn’t seem to be room for their kind of specialists anymore.

Sully, originally a free agent from Delaware, is a free agent again since his contract expired last year. But he has told the Rams he would rather be traded or released than sign with them again--the sooner the better so he can join another team.

Although he realized he might not be among the seven defensive backs Coach John Robinson plans to keep, Sully said he didn’t just want to hang on, anyway.

“I made up my mind at the end of last year,” he said, while watching the rookies and young reserves scrimmage the Dallas Cowboys this week. “I’ve always wanted to play. If it was ever gonna happen for me, it would have been last year with all the injuries. Then they drafted a defensive back (Jerry Gray of Texas) number one.”

Sully said he has talked most seriously with Tampa Bay and Detroit.

“The Rams have been very good,” he said. “It’s been very amiable. There’s no animosity, whatsoever.

“Coach Robinson had me penciled in as a special teams player. That’s very nice, but that’s not what I want. It’s time for me to play. Camps are opening. I hope something will work out this weekend.”

Said Robinson: “I’d like to keep Ivory, but if he’s unhappy, we wouldn’t be a better team with him. He’s been an excellent Ram and a great guy. He thinks he’s a starting safety and wants an opportunity to find out. He deserves it. We’ll have an announcement this weekend.”