LA Rams 2023 Mock Draft featuring 3 blue chip OL prospects

The LA Rams will certainly be focused on bolstering their team with the 2023 NFL Draft. But how quickly can rookies be expected to make an impact on an NFL team? And will the LA Rams, having gone through an epically bad season of remaining healthy, be willing to change their practice of giving all the snaps to only their best veterans?

I don’t know the answer to those questions, but the answers will play a huge part in how effective the LA Rams are in selecting their next crop of rookies to add to this team. After all, the key factors to a successful rookie season are:

Talent, fit, coaching, and perhaps most of all, opportunity. Even the highly lauded RB Kyren Williams from the 2022 NFL Draft class has only carried the football 25 times for 108 yards by Week 14. While he has the first three, 25 carries with just four games remaining is certainly not the level of opportunity that many fans or Fantasy Football teams have been expecting.

This is a unique version of an LA Rams mock draft. While I used an online NFL Draft Simulator, I limited my pick options to the players who were named in the LA Rams Draft: Top 50 Rams Big Board for 2023 NFL Draft that NFL Mocks.com site expert Hunter Haas had customized for the Rams draft needs. So how did that all turn out?  While I think the results were rather impressive, the true litmus test is how you, the reader, feel it has played out. So let’s get right to it. Let us know in the comments section what you think.

Round 2: Pick 39

OT Blake Freeland out of Brigham Young University jumped off the page at me. Just imagine the LA Rams getting a true rookie offensive tackle who stands 6-foot-8, weighs 308 pounds, and is a former state champion in both the shot put and javelin. It’s the best of all worlds, isn’t it? The key to being an outstanding blindside offensive tackle in the NFL is an offensive lineman who possesses great size, power, reach, handwork, and footwork. Freeland has all the makings of a rookie offensive tackle who the Rams can and should draft, line up as their starting left tackle, and let him grow through the preseason into the position.

The Rams have a chance with Freeland to get someone who possesses all of those uncoachable attributes that make a huge difference when everything falls into place. And wouldn’t it be fun to take a chance at getting rock-solid offensive line play at the left tackle position again?

The Rams know that an NFL Championship team needs an elite blindside blocker, a shut-down DB, a strong-armed QB, and a relentless pass rusher. The biggest void on the Rams roster is that elite blindside blocker, a role that Blake Freeland could develop into with the right coaching and patience.

And the depth on the Rams’ offensive line by drafting him right out of the blocks is the right message to send to QB Matthew Stafford.  Protecting the quarterback must be the no-mistakes message by the Rams in this off-season. Drafting OT Blake Freeland is the equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops.