If LA Rams win Super Bowl LVI, the NFL draft will never be the same

The LA Rams have not had a first-round draft pick in five years, not since they picked QB Jared Goff first overall in the 2016 NFL Draft. Prior to that, with the first pick of the 2010 NFL Draft, the St. Louis Rams selected quarterback Sam Bradford from the University of Oklahoma. Despite his 34-48-1 lifetime career record as an NFL starting quarterback, Bradford managed to parlay that into a $130 million NFL career.

Yes, you read that right, $130 million. And despite being the consensus Top-Pick of the 2010 NFL Draft, that’s not exactly what the Rams were looking for there with that pick. Making matters worse, the rules of the NFL at that time did not restrict NFL teams from paying whatever the as-yet unsigned rookie and his agent demanded.

But the rules on first-round draft picks have changed since Bradford’s draft, and just maybe, in part, precisely because of how Bradford gamed the system. Back then, a first-round pick didn’t have any salary restrictions to the negotiations. In many ways, it was Bradford’s deal that incensed NFL owners and players alike to insist upon rookie salary tiers. The NFL constructed a salary cap in place for rookies, because teams were paying millions for a draft pick, much of it guaranteed, before he ever took a snap and there were no guarantees he’d pan out.

Devaluating the first-round pick, again?

Of course, as soon as those salary cap tiers were in place once more, the NFL Draft became popular among NFL front offices once more. Teams, who drafted wisely, could leverage the guaranteed cheaper labor coming out of the draft to build better-than-ever rosters to win with younger quarterbacks. Since that time, both the Philadelphia Eagles and LA Rams have been to the Super Bowl on a strength of a quarterback on an inexpensive rookie deal.

In the 2021 NFL Draft, ten rookie quarterbacks were selected. Five quarterbacks were selected in the first round. Three quarterbacks were chosen with the three consecutive top picks of the draft. No, quarterbacks are not that much NFL-ready, nor are they that much more talented. They are simply that much less expensive than ever before.

The point of all this is that if the Rams were to win the Super Bowl, the rest of the league would quickly see that the true value of the first-round draft picks is over-stated, over-rated, and maybe not nearly as valuable as most teams think. Forget the economics for the NFL Draft momentarily. Let’s talk about return on investment to an NFL front office

Return on investment

You see, there’s this universally held perception that first-round picks are the gateway to a team that wants to rebuild and challenge. So, if the Rams are able to build a perennial playoff-contending team without any first-round picks, just as they have done for the last few seasons, well, what is the value of a first-rounder? Not that much.

And should the Rams win Super Bowl LVI this upcoming season after perennially trading away their first-round picks for established veteran players who are arguably game-changers? And then filling out the Rams’ roster through talented players found in the middle and late rounds of the draft, the copycat league that is the NFL would soon emulate the Rams draft methods themselves. The other 31 teams would have to re-evaluate just what the worth of first-rounders truly is.

Because the Rams’ success would be proof of that.

Take this year’s draft, for example. Three other teams did not have any first-round picks – the Kansas City Chiefs, the Seattle Seahawks, and the Houston Texans. No cellar dweller in that bunch. While the Houston Texans are in a bit of a funk right now, is there any doubt if the team was on good terms with quarterback Deshaun Watson that the Texans would not be in the hunt for a 2021 NFL Playoff berth?

What are the odds?

The success rate of a first-round pick is roughly 60 percent, but at a much higher salary cost than other draft rounds, so at best your selection is a 60-40 crapshoot. Not particularly good odds. And thanks to the NFL salary tier, those first-round picks are awfully expensive players to bench compared to their peers. Wouldn’t it then, just make sense to deal your first-rounders away, just as the Rams have done to acquire the likes of a veteran quarterback such as Matthew Stafford, or before that, a stud All-Pro defensive back like Jalen Ramsey?

The Rams’  winning the Super Bowl would subvert the dominant paradigm. If the Rams can trade away their first-rounders and yet, still achieve success, maybe we should do the same. The net effect would be an under-valuation, a market correction about the perceived value of first-round picks.

After the NFL put the salary cap in place in 2011,  the value of an NFL first-round pick actually got exaggerated. It became similar to a latent desire to possess gold. First-rounders were viewed as gold. Gotta have ’em. Gotta get ’em. Gotta get ’em all. And their value went up due to overheated demand.

Wait’ll they get a load of this?

Along come the Rams saying, that ‘ain’t necessarily so, or at least, that’s not how we view things. There’s more than one way to build a team and while the rest of you pursue a strategy of amassing first-round picks, we are gonna go contrarian to the rest of you and trade away all our first-round picks in exchange for solid veteran starting players. How do you like them apples?

And if they achieve a Super Bowl ring it will be. “How you like me now?”

It would almost certainly require the Rams to win the Super Bowl, however, to drive this point home to the rest of the general managers of the NFL. The prevailing wisdom that if you get first-round picks you will become a Super Bowl contender in three years is but one route to skin the cat, but not the only route. And nobody wants to be an outlier in the very competitive football industry.

Well, nobody but LA Rams GM Les Snead and HC Sean McVay. And we can all then thank Les Snead and Sean McVay for subverting the dominant NFL paradigm. But hold off until they hoist that Lombardi. Then, and only then, will it become official.