The Los Angeles Rams keep telling us how they feel about the NFL Draft

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Les Snead and the Rams made an aggressive move for Brian Burns at the trade deadline

The NFL draft, and the NFL draft evaluation process, is an inexact science at best. Anyone who has spent time watching prospects, ranking prospects, putting together mock drafts, or even just following the draft itself, knows how hard it is for teams to get evaluations right. Every year is filled with surprises up and down the board.

Which could be leading some teams to completely revisit how they approach the draft itself.

Consider Les Snead, Sean McVay, and the Los Angeles Rams. In not so many words, the organization keeps telling us how they feel about the draft. Snead and the Rams made a number of aggressive moves over the past few years, giving up future draft capital for proven, experienced players. One such move was the trade for quarterback Matthew Stafford, which saw Los Angeles send Jared Goff, a 2021 third-round pick, and first-round picks in both 2022 and 2023 to Detroit for the quarterback.

Then prior to last year’s trade deadline, Snead sent second- and third-round picks in 2022 to the Denver Broncos for Von Miller.

Looking back, here is how the Rams have used their first-round selections since 2016. That season, they drafted Goff in the first round, but they did not have a first-round pick in 2017 as they used that pick in the trade up to draft Goff in 2016.

They used their 2018 first-round selection in a grade for Brandin Cooks.

Los Angeles traded out of the 2019 first-round in a move with the Atlanta Falcons, that saw Atlanta come up to pick 31 overall to draft offensive lineman Kaleb McGary.

The Rams used first-round picks in 2020 and 2021 to acquire defensive back Jalen Ramsey.

Then there was the Stafford trade, which saw them ship first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 to Detroit.

Currently, the Rams do not have a first-round pick until 2024.

But according to a report from CBS Sports, they tried to part with that recently, and in a very aggressive way.

According to Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, Snead and the Rams pushed hard to trade for pass rusher Brian Burns of the Carolina Panthers. After trade talks surrounding running back Christian McCaffrey of the Panthers broke down, Snead turned his sights on Burns, offering their 2024 first-round pick, their 2025 first-round pick, and a 2023 second-round pick in an attempt to secure Burns from the Panthers.

Carolina general manager Scott Fitterer said no.

Had that deal gone through, however, the Rams might have gone almost a full decade without using a first-round pick.

Snead’s aggressive moves have turned him into an internet meme, and led some to wonder if his approach will change how the league builds rosters, and how teams view the draft. Snead was asked about this, and more, in an interview with the New York Times over the summer. “But I do think in the last five to 10 years, teams have started to do things differently and attack their windows or attack their rebuilds. I’m not saying it was just us — maybe what we’ve done accelerated it — but there’s been a trend of teams being less conservative,” Snead said.

Snead also discussed the factors that could lead to more teams being aggressive:

Some would say there’s a younger, maybe less traditional group of head coaches and general managers. Maybe it’s the influx of analytics. It just might be teams realizing that maybe we’re more in a microwaveable time in that the five-year plan is maybe outdated. Can you get this thing done in a two-year plan? I think you’ve got to add to the element of the players, too. Some are saying: “Wait a minute, I’m in my prime and I’m not sure this is the place to be. Could you move me to a place that I could win?” There’s a lot of factors.

Snead realized that the team had a window to be aggressive, with some important pieces in place. So it was time to be aggressive:

A phrase we’ve been throwing around is “Attack Success.” We’ve really been all in since 2017; it wasn’t just last year. Once we broke through, we realized we’ve got a special head coach and play caller, difference makers on the offensive side of the ball and have always had a salty defense. Let’s attack this window, and we’re still going to attack it.

Snead’s approach delivered a Super Bowl to the Rams, and may indeed have changed how teams view the draft. Consider this analysis, from March, which saw that just 75% of teams have a first-round pick in the upcoming draft:

Snead’s aggressive play for Burns fits with their operational model: Acquire proven talent via trades, even if it requires sacrificing future draft capital.

At some point, the window in Los Angeles will close, Rams might need to rebuild. Aaron Donald flirted with retirement this offseason, and recent reporting indicates that when the current core in Los Angeles leaves, McVay himself will follow.

That might be the time that Snead learns to love the draft again: “The neat thing about our system is when we draft a rookie, we’re not necessarily relying on him to start. We can develop and bring him along. So I would say that the new meme that will not become a meme would really be that the Rams ‘focus on the draft picks.’”