Peter King - Football Morning in AmericaNumbers GameThere is a secret to the Rams’ success, and it is hidden in plain sight. Who knows how long the Rams will be able to stay on top of the NFL, but one of their big keys has been making chicken salad out of chicken feathers. Over the past five years, GM Les Snead and his personnel team have done that as well as any team in the league.
Since 2017, the Rams have not picked earlier than 44th in any draft. So since Sean McVay took over as coach, they haven’t picked till—at the earliest—the middle of round two. It’s well-documented that they’ve used high picks to acquire veterans (Jalen Ramsey, Matthew Stafford, Von Miller among others). And it obviously paid off with the Super Bowl win this month.
But if you sacrifice all those picks, you better be very good with the lower picks. The Rams have had 40 picks in the third through seventh rounds of the last five drafts (8.0 per year, on average). Twelve of those players, or undrafted players, from the last five years played 30 percent or more of the snaps in the 2021 championship season, per Pro Football Reference. A 13th, Sebastian Joseph-Day, was on his way to playing half the snaps this year but was hurt in midseason. Four more Rams mid-round picks since 2017—John Franklin-Meyers, Samson Ebukam, Josh Reynolds and John Johnson—played at least a third of snaps for other teams in 2021.
Just think: 15 of 40 mid- and low-round picks, plus two undrafted guys, played prominent roles on NFL teams in 2021 … and 12 were major cogs for a Super Bowl winner.
The Rams who graduated from just guys in the last five drafts to wearing Super Bowl rings today, ranked by percentage of snaps played for the Super Bowl champs in the regular season:
1. Guard David Edwards (169th pick, 2019), 99.6 percent playtime
2. Wide receiver Cooper Kupp (69th pick, 2017), 94.0
3. Safety Jordan Fuller (199th pick, 2020), 88.5
4. Center Brian Allen (111th pick, 2018), 82.9
5. Defensive tackle Greg Gaines (134th pick, 2019), 67.1
6. Linebacker Troy Reeder (undrafted, 2019), 58.6
7. Running back Darrell Henderson (70th pick, 2019), 46.6
8. Safety David Long (79th pick, 2019), 44.4
9. Cornerback Donte Deayon (undrafted, 2018), 39.6
10. Linebacker Ernest Jones (103rd pick, 2021), 37.8
11. Safety Nick Scott (243rd pick, 2019), 35.5
12. Linebacker Terrell Lewis (84th pick, 2020), 31.6
Two postscripts:• The Rams have traded their top three picks this year, but will start draft weekend with eight, including five compensatory picks. Knowing Snead, I’d expect the Rams to have nine or 10 picks before the draft is over. They just won’t be high ones. That hasn’t been a problem recently.
• For this to work, there has be a good relationship between the coaching staff and the personnel staff—because the coaches have to know the formula is to get a lot of low-drafted players ready to play. Rams safety Nick Scott, a seventh-round pick in 2019, is a great example. He was a special-teamer mostly in his first two years while learning how to be an NFL safety. When injuries forced him to play this year, he was more than ready. Among safeties who played at least two playoff games this year, Scott was third in the league in passer-rating allowed (47.9), per PFF. So the coaches got Scott ready, and when his moment came, he played winning football. My point here is that lots of coaches like to play veterans and won’t give young players, particularly the lesser ones, early chances. With the Rams, it’s built in that they have to.
BeachBoy
