5 reasons LA Rams 2020 NFL Draft strategy = Quantity over quality

Reason 5: Lower picks are hungrier

Is there a point where competitive athletes are satiated? After all, does competition revolve around being the best you can be, or simply just better than others?  The true answer is more of the latter in competitive sports, particularly when emerging from college.

In the grand scheme of things, graduating from college ends a person’s chapter of scholastic education and begins a person’s real life adventure.  But the life and culture of academia is unique and a world unto itself.  College football players projected for round one selection in the upcoming NFL Draft had mastered NCAA football. Their transition to the next level is oftentimes littered with school, conference, and NCAA achievements, awards, and accolade.

All others? Sit, watch, and want some recognition of their own.

That “eye of the tiger” carries over into the NFL. Athletes enter the next chapter either ripe with success or eager for it.  While it does not show up in the statistics, it shows up with each new wave of rookies eager to contribute. After all, how do players who can run faster, lift greater weights, jump higher, or turn on a dime better even compete in the NFL?  Answer: they want it more.

Passion will always play a larger role in production than pedigree. In a professional football league which demands perfection, the call to improve is a day and night hunger. It becomes a dull ache gnawing at the soul, and can only be silenced by training and reproving constantly that the player is improving, and sees the improvement.  Top picks feel that hunger vanish. Those not chosen, even if their pro careers prove otherwise, never forget.  11 years later, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers still recalls that decision of then San Francisco 49ers to select quarterback Alex Smith over him.  Sometimes, that hunger never dies.