The Rams don’t build their roster the way most other teams do. They don’t grip their first-round picks with a vice, holding onto them like family heirlooms. Instead, they trade any and all valuable draft picks for proven players who can help them win more immediately than a rookie would.
They don’t ignore the draft, though, because much of their roster is rounded out by picks in the later rounds. They just prefer to exchange early picks for stars like Jalen Ramsey and Matthew Stafford.
It’s understandably difficult to keep doing this year in and year out, especially considering they have a limited allotment of top-100 picks each season. And COO Kevin Demoff knows it might not be sustainable.
But he does know that the Rams will remain aggressive no matter how they go about constructing a championship-caliber team.
“I don’t know that this model in particular is sustainable forever,” Demoff told the LA Times. “To me, it’s not about, ‘Oh, this is the model we will always have.’ I think our model has been [being] aggressive in trying to build the best team that we can build. That is sustainable.”
One of the biggest challenges with the Rams’ approach is signing all of the players they acquire – or fitting their existing contracts under the cap. With Ramsey, they gave him a $100 million contract less than a year after acquiring him. They just gave Stafford a $160 million extension, too, and they paid Brandin Cooks after he was acquired in 2018.
So far, they’ve managed to keep most of the players they’ve traded for, but they couldn’t get a deal done with Von Miller to extend his contract, so it doesn’t always work out as anticipated.
That won’t change their aggressive pursuit of a championship, though, because had they not acquired Miller, they might not have won Super Bowl LVI.
