Following their first playoff appearance in well over a decade, the Los Angeles Rams have ramped up their effort this offseason to keep that momentum moving forward. The front office has been quite active in adding talent on the defensive side of the ball through the trade market.

This saw the team acquire All-Pro cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib to their secondary in separate trades last month that have beefed up their secondary. During a recent interview with Around The NFL Podcast, general manager Les Snead voiced that the decision to move on from veteran linebacker Alec Ogletree was necessary in order to add those two Pro Bowl cornerbacks to the mix (H/T Chris Wesseling of NFL.com).

“Great leader, great human. We re-signed him because he was one of our best football players,” Snead explained. “But when we went back and really analyzed, talked about, discussed what makes Wade's defense go, it's the corner position.

“And interestingly we did the Marcus Peters trade before we did the Aqib Talib trade. But once Aqib became available, how do you fit him within the parameters of your salary cap, with other things like Aaron Donald extension, things like that, coming down the line? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get gains. … Once we came up with that vision, that goal, we attacked the offseason.”

Ogletree had become one of the key pieces of the piece defensively for the Rams in is first five seasons after being taken the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft. In fact, the front office had inked him to a four-year, $42.7 million last October to keep him under contract on through the 2021 season. He had become a huge asset in the front seven making the effective transition from outside linebacker to middle linebacker over the last two seasons after the departure of James Laurinaitis.

However, the Rams couldn't turn down the opportunity to add two of the best cornerbacks in the league to their secondary this offseason. It has brought stability by giving them potentially the top duo in the league lined up on the outside. This is not forgetting the team being able to re-sign veteran cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman and add former Green Bay Packers cornerback Sam Shields.

The linebacker position has become an area that the team will need to address at some point this offseason to help fill the void left by Ogletree, but the addition of both Peters and Talib should significantly less that loss.