LA Rams Draft: Raiders pay Round 5 premium to trade back

The LA Rams clearly had their eyes on the prize in Round 5, trading up from the 175th overall pick to the 164th overall pick. Their trading partner was the Las Vegas Raiders, a team who clearly was comfortable trading back and adding the 238th overall pick in Round 7 to do so. Now, the question is, who emerged with the best draft value in that exchange?

After all, the exchange of draft picks ultimately will rest upon the quality of the players involved as a result of those draft picks. But It’s a pretty good indication of judging with team paid the Premium to attract their trading partner into the exchange to determine who initiated the draft pick trade.

So the deal was this:

Thankfully, I no longer need to get out my slide rule nor go to a draft value table, look up the draft picks, and then work out the math on paper. We now have a far more sophisticated method of working out the math, thanks to a recently uncovered website made specifically for this scenario.

The website is called Calculator Soup.com, and it is set up to allow data input for the draft picks from each of the two NFL teams involved in the exchange. Once the picks are typed into the appropriate columns, clicking the calculate button spits out the details of this particular trade.

In this exchange, Calculator Soup provides the following information about this draft day trade:

1. Team                        LA Rams       LV Raiders
2. Picks traded          175, 238            164
3. Value traded           24                         26.8
4. Gain/Loss%             11.67%                (10.45%)

After this assessment, we can conclude that either LA Rams GM Les Snead is one helluva negotiator under a timed deadline, or it was the Las Vegas Raiders, sitting at pick 164, who wanted to bail at that spot and sought the best possible deal to move back. Of course, the LA Rams selected Notre Dame RB Kyren Williams with the 164th overall pick.

Pick 164: RB Kyren Williams out of Notre Dame

So the pieces to the puzzle are beginning to take shape. Kyren Williams was not only a value-added pick for the LA Rams offense, but the Rams got a bump in value from the pick exchange as well.

Who did the Raiders select at 175 and 238? At 175, they added Tennessee DT Mathew Butler, and at 238, they selected Ohio St. OT Thayer Munford. Based on the immediate reaction to the LA Rams’ selection of Williams, fans already love the pick.  Now knowing that the Raiders paid a premium to the Rams to move back, fans can appreciate the selection a bit more.