I don't buy the banned substance violation talk about why the Rams released Fakhir Brown. If it were simply a matter of knowing that the ax was going to fall on Brown for substance violations, why release him until he had to go with the team's pass defense in dire need of warm bodies.
Look, Brown can play, and as the results show, he wasn't. Substance violations may have been a secondary argument to the whole thing, but they're not getting 100% from Brown right now and that's a problem that had to be dealt with, esp with a young Tye Hill struggling with confidence issues and not being a totally lost cause for the Rams yet (or at least a guy they can't give up on as easy).