Former Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn, unemployed for more than two months and eager to settle in with a new team well in advance of the start of training camp, is close to deciding where he will resume his NFL career.

In St. Louis or Jacksonville?

While it remains uncertain when Sehorn will make a decision, sources close to the veteran said Thursday he probably will make up his mind before the end of this week. In fact, until the Jaguars jumped back into the substantive bidding Thursday, Sehorn was all but settled on joining the Rams and might have been signed in time to participate in a mini-camp this weekend.

Convinced that the 10-year-veteran can make the transition from cornerback to free safety and make a difference in their revamped secondary, the Rams had recently stepped up negotiations. The Jaguars, it appears, prefer that Sehorn remain at cornerback.

Sehorn, 32, was released by the Giants on March 7, in part for salary cap reasons and also because team officials and coaches believed his best football was behind him. The release ended the tenure of one of New York's highest-profile athletes of the past decade.

But the Rams and Jaguars clearly believe there is a second, productive chapter to Sehorn's career. They were two of the four franchises that contacted him quickly and visited after his release. The other teams that showed an interest in Sehorn were the Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers.

The four teams were split on whether they thought Sehorn could play safety or had to remain at cornerback.

Sehorn certainly believes he can make the switch to safety, a position he played at Southern California. He had told Giants coach Jim Fassel early in the offseason that he was more than willing to move to the interior.

Releasing Sehorn was not only an emotional move for the Giants organization, it was an expensive one as well, since New York had to take an $8 million salary cap hit in 2003 for a player no longer on its roster. It is an enormous amount of so-called "dead money" for one player; Sehorn was due a $1 million roster bonus on March 10.

The Giants had offered Sehorn a $1 million base salary, with the likelihood he would have again filled a No. 3 cornerback role behind young, talented starters Will Allen and William Peterson. But Sehorn sought to have at least a part of the $1 million guaranteed and the team would not make assurances sufficient to meet his demands.

Sehorn was scheduled to earn a base salary of $4.3 million in 2003 under his Giants contract. That contract, a six-year, $36 million deal signed in 2001, proved a salary cap albatross for the organization, which was criticized at the time for awarding such a lucrative deal to a player who many in the league believed was on the decline.

Because of the timing of the move, all the prorated signing bonuses shares in Sehorn's contract accelerate into the club's 2003 cap. Had the Giants delayed releasing Sehorn until after June 1, they could have counted only $2 million against the '03 spending limit, with $6 million then applied to their '04 cap.

Fresh out of Southern Cal as a second-round pick 1994, Sehorn was one of the NFL's most talented and fluid athletes but hasn't been the same since tearing his ACL on a kickoff return in the 1998 preseason. After the injury, Sehorn never again started all 16 games in a season, and appeared in 16 games just once.

Sehorn was drafted as a safety but, very early in his career, it became obvious he was capable of playing cornerback. His rare mix of size, speed and occasionally spectacular playmaking ability made him one of the league's premier players at his position.

But the torn ACL was the first in a string of injuries that clearly affected his productivity. In the four seasons following the knee injury, Sehorn started just 42 games and had only eight interceptions. He played in 107 games for the Giants, had 418 tackles, 19 interceptions, 82 passes defensed and 5½ sacks.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.