Why the LA Rams won the Jalen Ramsey trade

Deal details finally available

Let’s start off by quickly assessing the 10,000-foot perspective for this deal. The objective for the LA Rams was to shore up the pass defense. Somewhere in the top 50 percent or so was the plan. In 2019, the LA Rams pass defense was good enough to be ranked 12th-best in the NFL for yards allowed, and 13th best in the NFL for touchdowns surrendered.

Los Angeles Rams

In 2020, the LA Rams were suddenly the NFL’s best 2020 pass defense. The team allowed just 190.7 passing yards per game while allowing an average of just one touchdown per game. So for that reason alone, the LA Rams can be declared a winner in the aftermath of the trade. After all, All-Pro defensive back Jalen Ramsey has been instrumental in shutting the opposition’s best offensive weapon since he arrived.

No team sits down and suddenly makes the decision “We should trade our All-Pro player” ever. So the incentive for the Jacksonville Jaguars to field the offer by the LA Rams was their own (Jags) assessment that they would not be able to re-sign Ramsey to a new contract. In that assessment, they believed that a handful of quite valuable draft picks would be better than watching Ramsey depart in free agency, leaving Jacksonville the likely award of one compensatory draft pick in the following year.

And so, the logic of getting some now overruled the logic of letting events play out. So this is the outcome of that trade.

The original trade was two firsts and a fourth. But lo and behold, the Rams traded for their original fourth with the Jaguars, netting the Jags a fourth and a sixth-round pick. The Rams used their original fourth-round pick to select athletic defensive back, Robert Rochell. Now, with all of the draft picks used to select players, we can begin to assess the results.