Chargers’ Tom Telesco says people forget how well the Rams have used late-round picks

[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com] Chargers’ Tom Telesco says people forget how well the Rams have used late-round picks
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 25, 2022, 4:52 PM EDT

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When the Rams said “F them picks” and won the Super Bowl after trading two first-round picks for Matthew Stafford and second- and third-round picks for Von Miller, some thought it was ushering in a new era in which NFL teams didn’t care too much about the draft.

Chargers General Manager Tom Telesco says not so fast.

Telesco was asked about the Rams’ success in eschewing draft picks and said that in reality the draft remains extremely important to building a roster — including for the Rams, who have drafted well in the late rounds.

“I think what people forget about the Rams — I mean, everyone is focused on those first-round picks — but they’ve drafted and developed players really well, middle and late [rounds],” Telesco said. “It kind of gets glossed over. I guess it’s not as sexy, but they’ve done a great job with that, both [Rams General Manager] Les [Snead] and [Rams coach] Sean [McVay]. No, I don’t think so. You can go back to the draft 20 or 30 years, teams have been trading first-round picks for players for a long time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If there was only one way to build a Super Bowl team, we would all take that exact same path. Obviously, the Rams did their path and it worked great, they won the Super Bowl. It hasn’t really changed the value of that first-round pick, at least for me. They’re not the first team to do it, they just did it really, really well.”