Convinced that Jason Sehorn can make a facile transition from cornerback to free safety, and that the 10-year veteran can also make a difference in their revamped secondary unit, the St. Louis Rams on Monday morning reached a contract agreement with the former New York Giants star, ESPN.com has learned.

Sehorn, 31, was released March 7 by the Giants, in part for salary cap considerations and also because team officials and coaches felt his best football was behind him. The release ended the tenure of one of the city's highest-profile athletes of the past 10 years.

But the Rams feel there is a second chapter, and a productive one, to Sehorn's football career and pursued him ardently for the past month. Among the other teams that showed an early interest, and visited with Sehorn, were the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers. Teams were split on whether they felt Sehorn could play safety or had to remain at cornerback.

In the end, Sehorn chose the Rams over the Jaguars and Panthers, although ESPN.com has learned that Green Bay and San Francisco also became 11th-hour suitors.

But the Rams recently accelerated their efforts to secure Sehorn and the two sides finally agreed on a one-year contract for $1 million, with the full amount guaranteed. The Rams had hoped to finish the deal late last week, and to have Sehorn at the weekend minicamp that concluded on Sunday, but the veteran player needed more time to deliberate.

It remains to be seen what the addition of Sehorn will mean to current starting free safety Kim Herring, a six-year veteran acquired as an unrestricted free agent in 2001. There had been rumors, even before the Rams first demonstrated an interest in Sehorn, that Herring could be replaced or even released.

The addition of Sehorn also carries a touch of irony, since Rams coach Mike Martz was once publicly critical of the veteran defensive back, suggesting he would love to face him on a regular basis. The two men were able to make light of Martz's remarks when they visited earlier this spring, and the Rams coach played a big role in recruiting Sehorn.

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

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

New York had offered Sehorn a $1 million base salary, with the likelihood he would have again filled a No. 3 cornerback role behind young and 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.

The veteran defensive back 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 Giants officials. The team was criticized at the time for awarding such a lucrative contract to a player who many in the league felt was a veteran of declining skill level.

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 until after June 1 in releasing Sehorn, they could have counted just $2 million against the '03 spending limit, with $6 million then applied to next year's salary cap.

The former Southern California star was one of the NFL's most talented and fluid athletes early in his career, but he hasn't been the same since suffering a catastrophic knee injury in the 1998 preseason, while returning a kickoff. After the injury, Sehorn never again started all 16 games in a season, and appeared in 16 games just one time.

In all, he played in 107 games for the Giants, and started 73 of them. He had 418 tackles, 19 interceptions, 82 passes defensed and 5½ sacks.

Sehorn was chosen in the second round of the '94 draft 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 anterior cruciate ligament suffered in 1998 began a string of injuries that clearly affected his productivity. In the four seasons following the injury, Sehorn started just 42 games and had only eight interceptions.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.