The Los Angeles Rams won a Super Bowl with quarterback Mathew Stafford, but now they’d like to trade him and move on. With the guaranteed money left on Stafford’s deal, that likely won’t happen. However, the team should still take a swing at finding a QB of the future in the 2023 NFL Draft, even without a first-round pick. At the NFL Scouting Combine Purdue QB Aidan O’Connell impressed NFL talent evaluators and is rising up draft boards. Here is why an Aidan O’Connell Rams pick is a perfect fit.

Aidan O’Connell is a perfect fit for the Rams roster in NFL Draft

The Rams traded away their 2023 first-round pick as part of the Matthew Stafford deal that led to the team winning the Super Bowl in early 2022. Head coach Sean McVay and general manager Les Snead would likely do the deal again, but after a 5-12 season, the Detroit Lions now own the team’s No. 6 overall selection.

At 35 and coming off a spinal contusion that cost the QB eight games in 2022, Stafford is not the long-term answer at the position for the Rams. And with the franchise’s lack of draft picks, taking a top-tier QB is also not in the cards.

This can’t stop the Rams from trying to find a new signal-caller, though, in the 2023 NFL Draft.

That means using a later-round pick to select a passer with upside. The Rams can do this with one of their 10 draft picks. The team has No. 36 in Round 2, No. 69 in Round 3, and then three in Round 5, three in Round 6, and two in Round 7.

With the current Rams picks, unless the team trades up — which isn’t likely — they will miss the top four QBs, and probably the top five, as Tennesee’s Hendon Hooker could go at the end of the first.

That leaves NFL Scouting Combine star Aidan O’Connell from Purdue as the player the team should target in the second or third round.

O’Connell played in 33 games in four seasons for the Boilermakers, racking up 9,219 passing yards with a 67% completion rate, 65 touchdowns, and 30 interceptions.

At the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine, O’Connell measured 6-foot-3 and 213 pounds. He didn’t do any of the athletic testing drills, but he was impressive throwing the ball. According to Pro Football Network, O’Connell hit 47-of-50 passes, and the three misses were drops by his receivers. Scouts said that only the No. 2 QB in the class, C.J. Stroud from Ohio State, had a better workout than his fellow Big 10 QB, O'Connell.

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What makes an Aidan O’Connell Rams union so intriguing is that the Purdue signal-caller is an accurate pocket passer, not dissimilar to Stafford.

The QB is accurate and smart with the ball. He checks down and doesn’t often force throws into bad spots, and he also knows when to throw it away instead of taking sacks. O’Connell wasn’t a shotgun-only QB in college either. He ran a pro-style offense with Purdue and played under center with play action quite well.

Surely McVay would love to get his hands on an athletic, prolific signal-caller like Stroud, Bryce Young, Will Levis, or Anthony Richardson. However, that’s just not in the cards this year. An Aidan O’Connell Rams pick would give the coach the next best thing, a smart, accurate game manager to run McVay’s offense.

O’Connell isn’t going to revolutionize the NFL like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, but he may be able to give the Rams the type of QB performance that Jared Goff gave them once upon a time. And with Goff at the helm, Sean McVay and the Rams got to a Super Bowl in 2018.

An Aidan O’Connell Rams combination won’t get the team back to the Big Game in 2023, but it could be a step in the right direction.

If Stafford comes back healthy and is still effective, O’Connell could benefit from sitting for a season and developing. However, if the Rams QB is done, as he looked at times last season even before the injury, the Purdue signal-caller seems like one of the most Week 1-ready passers in the 2023 NFL Draft.

The Rams have famously eschewed draft picks in recent seasons to add proven veterans in order to contend. That strategy worked perfectly in 2021, but now that is over.

It is officially time to start the rebuild in Los Angeles. That means trading players like Jalen Ramsey and starting to get premium draft picks back in the door. And taking a flier on an NFL Scouting Combine riser like Aidan O’Connell in the 2023 NFL Draft seems like a good place to start.