A Smaller Trader Les Trade String

 By John Turney 

Rams GM Les Snead

We've posted about trade strong before—draft picks that get parlayed into more picks and so on down the line. Here are a few posts you can read about HERE, HERE, and HERE. Those were long trade strings and involved multiple years.

We thought we'd do a smaller one that illustrates the same principle of getting the most out of a pick.

The Rams had traded its 2021 first-round pick to Jacksonville for Jalen Ramsey (also a 2020 first-rounder and a 2021 fourth-rounder).  The second-round pick (unwisely so far) went for Tutu Atwell. Okay, a strike.

The third-round pick, #88 overall is the focus here. Rather than use it to take, say, Ernest Jones (who the Rams may have been targeting with that pick anyway) they traded down with the 49ers for two fourth-rounders. 

Sure, they missed a chance at some players but they had an extra third-rounder as compensation for Brad Holmes leaving the Rams organization and going to Detroit (they have another comp third-rounder this year for that as well). So, with that comp pick they got Jones. So while we will never know if they lost a targeted player in the 15 picks that they dropped it's just as likely they got their man.

So, then they have two-fourths and with one they took defensive lineman Bobby Brown III  from Texas A&M. The other they traded to Jacksonville with a sixth-rounder for a lower fourth-round pick, a fifth, and a seventh.  And with that fifth-rounder, they traded down again for a lower fifth and another seventh-rounder. The Rams, of course, made the picks all along, adding players they wanted. 

Okay, it's confusing, but here are the NET ins-and-outs.

Out

3rd rounder

6th rounder

In

Bobby Brown III 

Robert Rochell     

Earnest Brown IV

Jake Funk

Ben Skowronek

All the while, as mentioned above, they got Ernest Jones who may have been the pick at #88 anyway and it is not impossible to think Bobby Brown III would have been the comp pick at #103 if the Rams had stood pat and taken Jones. Of course, we don't know that.

So, we don't know the end from the beginning, Jones seems like the starting MIKE of the future for the Rams. Brown is an unknown, his rookie year was basically a redshirt. Rochell played some then was basically benched. Earnest Brown didn't make the club. Funk was injured but was a contributor on special teams when healthy. Skowronek filled in for injuries wide receivers and was pretty good on special teams. He seems to have a good future in Los Angeles. 

The bottom line is that two picks turned in two five players, four of which made the team and still have shots at being real contributors, a could perhaps starters. And that has to be better than the one pick at #88 right? 

And this is what Les Snead has been doing for a decade. Sure, sometimes it works, other times it does not (ask Rams fans about Isiah Pead in 2012 when they lost Bobby Wagner trying to get too cute trading down). But other times it has worked well.

There is no doubt Rams GM "Trader Les" Snead can work the draft board and we expect more of the same in the 2022 NFL Draft.