Colts owner Jim Irsay said to local reporters the other day: “There was an article recently saying the Rams mortgaged their future and now they’re paying for it after they won the Super Bowl and had all that success, with the draft picks not being there.It's been a constant refrain in the media during the McVay/Snead years: The Rams have traded away their future, resulting in a lack of draft picks.
It's 100% false.
A full allotment of draft picks going into each draft is 7.
The Rams have had MORE than 7 picks in every draft since 2017.
Rams Draft Picks
2017- 8
2018- 11
2019- 8
2020- 9
2021- 9
2022 -8
Granted, they haven't made a 1st round pick in all those years and the majority of the picks were 3rd round and later...But those 1st rounders were traded away for proven players, all who were major contributors to their success.
They also did a good job in finding some really quality players with some of those later round picks. They wouldn't of had the success they have had without doing that.
Their strategy was to 1) not be afraid to trade high picks for great players. 2) Work the comp pick system to the max, getting 3 or 4 picks every year. 3) Trade down multiple times during every draft to create more picks...this resulted in them having 8 or more picks every year.
The whole "they mortgaged their future" is also BS. Teams can get better rapidly in today's NFL. They may have a rough year or two coming up, but I wouldn't bet against Snead/McVay making the Rams playoff quality pretty quckly. The biggest issue will be finding Stafford's replacement.
The Rams had a great run for 5 years that included 2 Super Bowl appearaces....a run that most players and fans would kill for....as was indicated in all the comments above.
The Rams also showed you can have success building a team a different way. That doesn't mean it is the right way, or it will always work, but there are plenty of teams who have done it the traditional way by always building through the draft that have rarely made the playoffs.
