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Sarah Barshop, ESPN Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES — As the 2022 Los Angeles Rams wrapped up a 5-12 season, the front office recognized the 2021 core that had won Super Bowl LVI was aging.
“You’re going to naturally want to run it back [or] repeat, and you bring a lot of those players back,” Rams general manager Les Snead said. “When it didn’t work out at that point, you got to say, ‘OK, who’s the core? How many years does that core have together? It’s not going to last forever. When is it best to start trying to engineer a new core?’
“That’s probably when it really began. … I don’t want to say the clock struck midnight, but the core, that team, that senior class … it just doesn’t last forever.”
So, changes were made — including trading star cornerback Jalen Ramsey to the Miami Dolphins for a third-round pick. To many, the move signaled the Rams’ championship window was closing, as they recouped draft capital and started to rebuild instead of sticking to the philosophy famously worn by Snead in the Super Bowl LVI championship parade, on a shirt with his photo and the line, “F— them picks.”
The Rams, after all, won the Super Bowl by taking huge swings to improve their roster, including trading for quarterback Matthew Stafford during the offseason, adding linebacker Von Miller at the trade deadline and signing Odell Beckham Jr. soon after. The moves were made to add to edge rusher Aaron Donald and receiver Cooper Kupp — two players along with Stafford whom Snead later called the “weight-bearing walls” of the roster.
As the Rams try to put together another Super Bowl contender, they’ve returned to building the roster in a more traditional way: through the draft. It’s an attempt to build a new core alongside the veterans on offense, including Stafford and Super Bowl LVI MVP Kupp. Though it’s early in the careers of the team’s two draft classes since Ramsey’s departure, the success they have had so far indicates the Rams are on their way.
“We’ll continue to try to evolve,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “It’s different than what it looked like a couple years ago. It’s different than what it looked like my very first year in 2017, all of which have allowed us to be able to continue to formulate a lot of good decisions.”
Trading Ramsey, who will line up for the Miami Dolphins against Los Angeles on “Monday Night Football” (8:15 ET, ABC/ESPN/ESPN+), in 2023 was the first sign in a changing approach to the Rams’ team-building philosophy. The Rams have evolved from ‘F— them picks’ to today’s 4-4 team featuring its first first-round draft pick in years.
THE RAMS WERE 7-1 at the trade deadline in 2021, and there was “a confidence level based on where Donald was at in his career” and the fact that outside linebacker Leonard Floyd was “really rolling,” McVay said.
“You’re saying, ‘Hey, a Von Miller-caliber of player comes available. Well, let’s go make an attempt to be able to go get him,’ and then Odell Beckham Jr. becomes available.”
Those moves were just the latest in the swings the Rams had taken to get there, including trading for Ramsey in October 2019 for two first-round picks and one fourth-round pick and then sending quarterback Jared Goff, their first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 and a third-rounder in 2021 to the Detroit Lions for Stafford.
“At a time when I stopped liking football as much, I got traded to L.A., and it just drastically changed everything for me,” Ramsey recalled of his time with the Rams. “It was just amazing.”
Along with trading draft picks, the Rams also paid those superstars, leading to a top-heavy roster, especially after paying Stafford, Donald and Kupp after the Super Bowl victory.
“It’s a different approach,” McVay said of the ways the Rams built the Super Bowl roster. “Some of it was by necessity. I think you’ve seen a lot of models that work. I think you have to be able to be committed to whatever that approach is based on all the parameters.”
Though the Rams didn’t make a trade at the deadline 2022 — they were 3-4 — they took two big swings: negotiating with the Carolina Panthers for running back Christian McCaffrey and linebacker Brian Burns. The Panthers traded McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers but did not trade Burns at the deadline.
Once it became clear that the 2022 version of the Rams couldn’t run it back the way the roster was built, the team started keeping its draft picks and saving salary cap space.
At the time, team president Kevin Demoff referenced the change in mindset happening out of necessity: “[We’re] probably a few players away from winning in the Super Bowl. How do we go start to acquire those players rather than saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go create all this space for one player.'”
In September 2024 — after his first season in Miami — Ramsey signed a three-year contract extension worth $24.1 million per year, making him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history for a second time in his career. The Rams had done the same for Ramsey four years earlier, signing him to a five-year, $105 million extension after trading for him in 2019.
On Thursday, McVay said Ramsey knows “the respect, the admiration I have for him as a player and what he meant to this team.”
“There were a lot of tough decisions that were on the horizon for us as a football team,” McVay said. “And it didn’t have anything with us not wanting him here. There was a lot of things that we had to do as a result of some previous years and things of that nature.
“He understood that, so it was important for us based on what he had done for us to try to be able to find a situation that suited both parties. Miami was somebody that was interested … [and] he was excited about that.”
During the league meetings in March 2023, after trading Ramsey and a quiet free agency period, Snead quipped, “We’re the boring Rams this year.”
At those same meetings, Demoff made it clear the Rams weren’t punting on the 2023 season. The Rams started 3-6 before winning seven of their last eight games to make the playoffs.
“There is always going to be at the macro level, some version of where … hey, you have players that have grown up together,” Snead said Tuesday. “They’re in their prime and then there is going to be the natural recourse of somewhat starting over with that as you begin anew, start afresh and start adding new players. That’s the big picture thing of what we’ve gone through from a standpoint of back in 2021.”
WHEN THE RAMS drafted linebacker Jared Verse in April, it was especially significant because it was the team’s first first-round pick since trading up to select Goff in 2016.
But while this might be a different way to build a team compared with their last Super Bowl roster, the Rams are beginning to see the method pay off.
Rams rookies have seven sacks and six interceptions this season, both the most in the NFL, according to ESPN Research. In the 2024 draft, the Rams selected five defensive players: Verse, defensive lineman Braden Fiske (second), Kamren Kinchens (third), outside linebacker Brennan Jackson (fifth) and defensive tackle Tyler Davis (sixth).
Verse (3.5) and Fiske (3.0) rank first and second, respectively, among rookies in sacks this season. Verse also entered Week 10 leading rookies with nine tackles for a loss, 24 pressures and 13 quarterback hits.
This group is built around defensive players drafted last year, including tackle Kobie Turner and linebacker Byron Young. Last season, Rams rookies had 19 sacks, the most in the NFL.
And in 2024, the Rams have 15 sacks by players in their first two seasons, which is the most in the NFL, according to ESPN Research.
The success was especially apparent in the Rams’ Week 9 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. In that game, Verse had a sack, Fiske had two, Kinchens had two interceptions and Davis had half a sack.
Fiske is one of two rookies this season to record multiple sacks in a game, according to ESPN Research. The Rams paid a significant cost to trade up for him. According to ESPN’s draft pick valuations, Los Angeles’ trade of picks No. 52, 155 and a 2025 second to Carolina for pick No. 39 was the most expensive Day 2 “overpay” of at least the past six drafts.
“There was an investment in this draft class, especially when you look at Jared Verse and Braden Fiske,” McVay said. “I thought both of those guys made their presence felt in a big way [against Seattle]. I thought [Week 9] was kind of a coming-out party for Braden Fiske in a way. He’s done some really good things. It’s tough that he only was charted with two sacks. He sure had an impact on a lot more than that when you go back and you watch the film.”
It is Verse’ attitude and edge on the field that stood out to McVay in the draft process and his “toughness” reminded him of Donald and Ramsey.
“He’s got some s— to him that I really like,” McVay said of Verse. “That’s been big for our defense. I think guys feed off that and it’s a good thing. You need some guys like that. Aaron [Donald] had that to him too. He just might not have talked as loud, but the way he would stare a hole through people they knew. Ramsey was like that.
“Sometimes those best defensive players, they have some stuff to them that you’re like, ‘Oh man, we need that.’ You need that edge, that energy, that swagger and Jared Verse definitely has that.”
And while Snead and McVay were adamant all offseason that replacing Donald — a future Hall of Famer — was not a task for one player, it is also clear that they have built a group they hope can be the core of their next Super Bowl team. One built through the draft.
