Why the Rams are incentivized to trade their first round draft pick again

Another year, another time that the Rams trade their first round pick if this happens

You might be thinking that the L.A. Rams are likely to trade their first round pick simply because they are the L.A. Rams, the heavily-repeated and most known fact about Les Snead’s regime being that the franchise hasn’t actually selected a player on day one since Jared Goff in 2016, but there’s another reason for it happening this year that is just as easy to understand.

The Rams have the 19th overall pick in the draft and that simply might be the worst possible spot for L.A. to have a first round pick: Too low in the draft order to get a blue chip prospect with a true first round grade, which is too low for Snead and Sean McVay to really have any choice other than to use their first rounder as a weapon to acquire something else.

Yes, I think the signs are once again pointing to the Rams trading their first round pick before or when they are officially on the clock.

How many prospects with first round grades?

There will be 32 football players drafted in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft but perhaps only half of them will be considered “near-consensus” first round talents. The typical number is about 20 prospects who have actual first round grades, but ESPN’s Matt Miller believes this is an unusually bad season for teams not picking in the top half of day one.

I tackled my list for the 2024 class with a strict grading scale after handing out 20 first-round scores in 2023, and I ended up with 16 names at this point in the process — up from 14 in late December. I’ll update this list periodically until draft time, so the number will keep changing with the combine and further tape study. But for now, here are the players who deserve a first-round grade on my board.

I know that the buzz of elite testing scores at the combine has many fans under the false assumption that there are probably even MORE than 32 players worthy of a true first round grade, but that is not the case. Remember, the Rams don’t even bother to show up to the combine.

I’m sure that Xavier Worthy and AD Mitchell have Snead double-checking his MPH scores from college tape and the Senior Bowl and so on, but the combine is still mostly just an opportunity to do medical evaluations and to find out if maybe there are some sleepers on days two and three who were stuck in less than ideal situations and circumstances in college.

Take running back Isaac Guerendo or center Tanor Bortolini for example, two easy standout combine “winners”; they’ve solidified a place in the middle rounds, not changed into first round grades overnight. Teams didn’t find out about these prospects on Saturday like most of us, they’ve been following them for years. Often since high school.

A typical NFL draft has something like 20 prospects who scouts seem to agree have real first round grades and if you don’t fall into that category then you likely are in a tier of an even larger group: The players who end up getting drafted between the early 20s and the late 40s.

There is such a slight difference between a late first and a late second that teams will often trade down if they are not enamored with a prospect at the time they’re on the clock, so long as another team sees an opportunity to fill a need or take a player who they feel won’t drop another 5-10 spots.

If this class only has 16-18 first round grades, there’s a very good chance that when Snead is on the clock he won’t see a prospect who he highly covets. For that reason, the Rams fans are probably already open for deals and L.A. could already be ready to wield that pick for a veteran player on the trade market if one strikes Snead’s fancy.

Why would the Rams trade pick #19?

For the same reason that the Rams have traded all of their recent first round picks.

When Snead traded two first round picks for Jalen Ramsey, he did it at a time when the Rams were confident that the selections would be in the early 20s to early 30s, and he was right. The Jaguars used those picks on K’Lavon Chaisson and Travis Etienne, two prospects not near the value of the type of player you get in Jalen Ramsey. The Rams didn’t have an opportunity to pick a top-5 prospect, so they traded two firsts and paid for one.

The same case happened with Matthew Stafford and the first of those two picks ended up 32nd overall because L.A. won the Super Bowl. Snead and McVay didn’t expect to be giving up sixth overall in 2023, but it was a worthy sacrifice.

Then there was the case of 2019, which is somewhat similar to the situation that the Rams are facing today:

Coming off of a Super Bowl loss, the Rams had the 31st pick in the draft. Not seeing any prospect too enticing in the late first, L.A. traded down three times and added two thirds and a fifth at the cost of a sixth, ending up with Taylor Rapp at pick #61.

What was the difference between Rapp and a prospect the Rams could have had at 31? Not much. Not enough to convince Snead that he shouldn’t add more picks.

How much better of a pick is 19 than 31? Well, it’s not a nothing difference, we know that. But it is possible that Snead will find himself in the exact same situation and choose to trade down, if not to give up the pick now with the expectation he won’t love a prospect when the draft gets here: If there are 16-18 prospects with first round grades, it is possible that only two or three or even zero are still on the board when L.A. is on the clock.

What if the two prospects left with first round grades play a position that the Rams don’t feel the need to draft in the first round this year? As opposed to wanting to trade that pick for a position that they really do want right now.

If Snead’s front office sees little difference between the prospects at 19 and the prospects at 35, for example, it would be a mistake to not try and trade down. There is only one other option besides sticking and picking at 19.

Would the Rams trade up?

The last two times the Rams had a first round pick that they were going to use in the draft and not on a veteran acquisition, they made huge leaps in the draft: In 2019 they made that huge fall down a full round. But don’t forget that in 2016, they went up from 15 to 1 for Goff, one of the highest climbs up the board in first round history.

Same GM still runs the Rams.

If Snead isn’t excited by prospects at 19, he could be enticed to trade up again for a prospect who would do a lot more to move the needle for the future of the franchise. Especially if Snead expects to win 10+ games in 2024, which we know he does, in which case he’s doing what he basically always does: Trades late first round picks for something of greater value.

It could be a quarterback, a left tackle, an edge rusher, or a receiver, all positions we know will come off the board in the top-18 picks before L.A. is scheduled to be on the clock. The Rams met with a top-10 receiver pick in Rome Odunze, they’re surely doing their homework on the top prospects for a reason.

It would be more like the Rams to trade into the top-10 than it would be to stay at 19 and that’s just a fact. It’s not an opinion. That’s what they do.

Maybe that won’t happen this year, but with some elite blue chip left tackles and receivers in the top-12 picks, and only a few top-15 edge rushers like Chop Robinson and Dallas Turner, it make sense that with pick 19 there are three very realistic options on the table besides stick and pick: Trade up, trade down, or trade for a veteran.

Snead does those three options way more often than he sticks and picks.