Five Takeaways from LA Rams 2021 NFL Draft

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the LA Rams‘ 2021 draft, perhaps we can glean a few initial impressions. Maybe we can even take a stab at making five fair-to-partly cloudy generalizations. Nothing too rash or knee-jerk, but rather, reasoned and considered reactions that have been given appropriate time to marinate (percolate?) as we bask in the afterglow (aftermath?) of our first post-coitus LA Rams’ NFL-draft cigarette.

Takeaways are kind of too strong of a word. That implies we know what’s really gone on inside the heads of GM Les Snead and head coach McVay and their nerd’s-nest geek-squad draftniks because those are the drivers behind this draft. And because they are truly the only people privy to just what went down in this year’s draft.

The rest of us observer fans are left to read the tea leaves and do our best to discern what underpins the team’s draft moves. We must interpret the post-draft propaganda and translate it the way a CIA analyst must look at a press release with dateline Moscow.

There’s an old Air Force proverb that comes to mind on the day after the draft’s conclusion. “If you’re catching flack, you must be on target.”

I say this because I woke up to a cacophony of LA Rams fans in the Twittersphere/blogosphere/cybersphere joining hands and singing kumbaya under the old gum tree with legions of day-after-the-draft pundits and self-styled armchair-draft experts (Hey, there’s only one Mel Kiper, OK, and Todd McShay is just a Johnny-come-lately, poor-man’s-imitation-generic version of Kiper) lamenting the Rams’ draft.