After spending years eagerly shipping out future draft picks for short-term production, the Los Angeles Rams were one of the most pick-happy teams in the 2024 NFL draft, selecting ten players back in April and adding five more UDFAs to their initial 53-man roster.
What gives? How did the Rams go from a team that famously saw their GM wear a shirt that said “F**k them picks” to the Super Bowl parade to one of the more astute selectors of collegiate talent based on a strong pool of data collection and NCAA scouting? Did they acknowledge the issue of building out a team with big-name players on expensive contracts? Or was a more home-grown approach considered preferable to adding and losing stars every season or two?
Discussing the philosophy change with reporters after the trade deadline, Les Snead noted that after building up a team for years, it was time to turn the page and enter a new era, much like when a collection of seniors all graduate from college.
“At the macro level, going back to that time, it probably started maybe even before Sean [McVay] got here. There was an element of having core players that grow together and in that particular window, it was very fulfilling when we went to two Super Bowls and won one. I wish we'd have won two. I wish we would've been to more, all those things. We can always go through that,” Snead told reporters.
“If you use the analogy of college football, there is a time when all of a sudden your players become seniors, and they graduate. Maybe it's age, they get older and they retire. There is always going to be, at the macro level, some version of where… hey, you have players that have grown up together. They're in their prime, and then there is going to be the natural recourse of somewhat starting over with that as you begin a new, start afresh, and start adding new players. That's the big picture thing of what we've gone through from a standpoint of back in 2021.”
McVay, too, discussed the matter ahead of the Rams' Monday Night Football showdown against the Miami Dolphins, noting that while the strategy has changed, they are still striving to maintain a formula for success all the same.
“We'll continue to try to evolve,” McVay told reporters via ESPN. “It's different than what it looked like a couple years ago. It's different than what it looked like my very first year in 2017, all of which have allowed us to be able to continue to formulate a lot of good decisions.”
Will this new strategy work? Will the Rams be able to build a team with long-term legs around their young core? Only time will tell, but considering how well Jared Verse has looked for the Rams in 2024, it sure looks promising.
Don't be sad it's over, Rams fans, be happy it happened
Continuing his comments on the changing landscape of the Rams' team-building philosophy, Snead revealed when he decided to turn the page on LA's Super Bowl roster in the pursuit of establishing something new.
“I think it probably started after the 2022 season where you're going to naturally want to, let's call it ‘run it back' [or] ‘repeat' and you bring a lot of those players back. When it didn't work out at that point, you had to say, ‘Okay, who's the core? How many years does that core have together? It's not going to last forever,” Snead told reporters.
“When is it best to start trying to engineer a new core?' You're always going to need to bring in younger players, rookie contracts, they grow together. At that point in time, maybe you do use some draft picks to add players that are in their prime to go with other players in their prime. That's probably when it really began. You just knew that… I don't want to say the clock struck midnight, but the core, that team, that senior class, it just doesn't last forever.”
Did the clock really strike midnight on that core? Could the Rams have still competed in 2023 if they kept players like Ramsey? Potentially so but considering Donald retired, it wouldn't have lasted. Even if Ramsey would look really good in a Rams uniform right now, instead of playing the team on Monday Night Football, they drafted Byron Young with the pick they got from the Dolphins, so do you know what? Even his exit has helped the Rams turn that page in a major way.
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