NFL Draft 2021: Top 5 LA Rams prospects from MAC

The LA Rams are very adept at uncovering NFL-caliber prospects from smaller collegiate football programs, those out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten-path programs where sometimes, those proverbial diamonds in the rough lurk in the shadows of anonymity.

And make no mistake about this – the success or failure of the Rams’ draft this year hinges almost entirely on how accurately they’ve assessed players available in rounds two through seven.

Maybe these prospects on the Rams’ radar aren’t exactly household names to all those mock-draft pundits out there, but the Rams have never particularly viewed that as an impediment. They like picking from those directional colleges, the ones with compass directions in their names.

Case(s) in point: WR Nsimba Webster, Eastern Washington.  WR Cooper Kupp, also from Eastern Washington. TE Tyler Higbee, Western Kentucky. OG (no, not Original Gangster) Chandler Brewer, Middle Tennessee. LB Christian Rozeboom, South Dakota State. And don’t forget former LA Rams DE Morgan Fox from Colorado State-Pueblo. DT Michael Hoecht from Brown University. Even WR J.J. Koski from Cal-Poly.

Sometimes, they even snag their coaches from the lesser-known NFL coaching ranks. Brandon Staley was plucked from the rather anonymous Denver Broncos where he toiled as their outside linebackers coach to become the team’s rookie defensive coordinator. Of course, now he’s the head coach of that other team that plays at SoFi Stadium known as the LA Chargers.

So let’s plumb the depths of the Mid-American Conference (MAC), a Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois in search of Rams-type players.