Los Angeles Rams must trade Nick Foles

When the news broke on Thursday that the Los Angeles Rams had traded up with the Tennessee Titans for the number one overall draft selection in this year’s draft, my thought process went as follows:

1 –

2 – OK, breathe. This could be great. But how many picks have we given up to get the number one slot?

3 –

By anyone’s estimation, the Los Angeles Rams gave up a lot to move up. The first and third round selection in this years and next year’s draft go to Tennessee, along with both the Rams second round selections this year. The Rams get the Titans’ fourth and sixth round picks at the end of April.

Universal wisdom is that the Rams will use the newly acquired first overall pick on the new franchise quarterback. (As much as Jeff Fisher loves defense, a trade of this magnitude will not be used so the team can draft Jalen Ramsey – despite what the player himself may jokingly hint at.) Whether the Rams go with Carson Wentz or Jared Goff (and it is only between these two) will be confirmed on April 28^th. But surely the Rams have too many other needs on the roster to have given up so many early round selections?

Therein lies the key. How can the Rams bring in support at wide receiver, safety and other positions of need with so few picks. Granted, there are now more late round picks where the team might pick up someone like EJ Gaines who immediately punches above their weight and gets a starting job. But clearly the further down the draft you go, the less chance there is of that happening. As things stand, the Rams have no selections between number one and 110 in the fourth round.

That is not a good situation to be in. The Rams do, however, still have quite an important card up their sleeve. One of the biggest eyebrow raisers of last offseason was the team’s decision to extend Nick Foles’ contract before he took a single snap. In the context of this week’s trade, the decision to tie Foles to the team might retrospectively be a stroke of genius, as it of course means the Rams could now trade Foles as opposed to letting him walk as an unrestricted free agent – which would have happened without the contract extension.

With a new quarterback soon to be arriving, Sean Mannion remaining on the sidelines as a development project and Case Keenum likely to remain as the backup, the Rams must surely be looking to trade Nick Foles in exchange for some mid-round draft picks. After all, there are still plenty of teams out there in need of a quarterback who may like the look of Foles. With the Rams and Browns likely to take the top two quarterbacks off the board with the first two picks of the draft, would one of these other teams take a chance on Foles rather than take one of the lower ranked signal callers? Quite possibly.

Given Foles’ performance last year, the Rams are certainly not going to get back into the first round and maybe not even the second by trading him away. In my opinion, getting a late round pick plus another towards the end of the second round or the top end of the third would be well worth it. Nick Foles will very soon be surplus to the Rams’ requirements. While his brief time with the Rams was certainly forgettable his 2013 season was anything but, and there may be others out there who may feel they can get more out of Foles than the Rams did. But that comes with a price.

So there it is. The Rams will a new quarterback taken with the first overall pick may not be enough. However, a new quarterback plus a bit more offensive talent acquired from picks gained after trading Nick Foles away all of a sudden looks much stronger. The Rams must use the next couple of weeks to work out a way to ship Foles and regain some of those lost draft selections. The success or otherwise of the main trade could depend on it.