5 LA Rams who have offered next to nothing in 2022

The ecosystem of the LA Rams roster is quite spectacular when everything is going according to plan, but an utter disaster when it’s not. Right now, you can probably guess that it’s not, and you would be perfectly correct. This is a team that is the ideal green team. Not because its carbon footprint is zero, but because the team is structured in such a way that the majority of the value-added process occurs at the LA Rams facility.

When it works, that is. Let’s walk through what I mean if nothing more than to clarify how this Rams roster-building cycle works when it works.

Because the team has a willingness and tendency to trade picks for veteran players, the team’s talent pipeline runs the risk of emptying out with few young players moving up through the ranks to replenish normal annual attrition. Players’ contracts expire, and the players then have a say over which NFL they will play for in the following season.

The Rams roster ecosystem is collapsing

As veteran players sign on with new teams, the value of their new contracts is ranked, and their former team is considered to be awarded compensatory draft picks the following season. NFL Teams have a maximum of four awarded compensatory draft picks for player contracts each year, plus any added comp picks for minority coaches or executives being hired on by another team as either the head coach or the general manager role.

Those picks then become additional rookies added to a team’s pipeline, creating a new crop of rookies in a draft class who enter the Rams as raw but talented rookies. Over the course of the next four seasons, those players are coached up into starters and significant role players, who then sign elsewhere for more money, and the Rams are back in the mix for awarded compensatory picks

But there is a hiccup in all of this. What if the younger players do not develop? What if they are not part of the Rams’ rotation? If the Rams fail to develop young players quickly enough, not only does the team suffer from non-contributors, but they hit the NFL Free Agency market with no reason to attract interest from other teams.  Right now, the Rams have a number of players who have done next to nothing to warrant a roster spot, let alone a role in the Rams’ rotation. Let’s discuss six such players: