Lone deadline deal confirms Rams GM Les Snead's continued mastery of NFL trades

The Los Angeles Rams acted decisively and quickly in the days leading up to the November 4 date set by the league as the 2025 NFL trade deadline. The team did not hesitate to pull the trigger on prying a young and promising cornerback, Roger McCreary, from the Tennessee Titans for a conditional fifth-round draft pick.

In return, the team adds McCreary and a conditional sixth-round pick from the Titans. In essence, the deal plays out very much like a draft-day trade, with the exception of LA's defense getting the benefit of a superb cornerback to help out now in 2025.

McCreary continues the undetected efforts to reinforce the secondary with blue-chip cornerbacks. He joins Emmanuel Forbes Jr. as the second college cornerback who had first-round projections but has failed to deliver to that level in the NFL, yet.

While the trade may not rival the wow-factor of the team trading first-round draft picks to the Jacksonville Jaguars for All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey, this is just one more example of why general manager Les Snead continues to exhibit mastery of the NFL trade.

Les Snead does the little things better than any NFL GM

NFL fans recognize Snead for his headline-making trades. He has changed the NFL landscape multiple times by trading for cornerback Jalen Ramsey, wide receiver Brandin Cooks, running back Sony Michel, quarterback Matthew Stafford, and pass rusher Von Miller.

But he uses that same attention to detail to churn the bottom end of the roster as well. As multiple NFL teams are scrambling for secondary help as time expires for this year's trade deadline, Snead can light a victory cigar knowing that he got his cornerback early enough to avoid that short-supply, high-demand inflation that will plague deadline deals.

And he did it all for a conditional draft pick swap. The conditions are simple. Los Angeles must send its highest fifth-round pick to Tennessee and get Tennessee's lowest sixth-round pick in return. That works out to the Titans almost certainly recouping the Round 5 pick traded for ILB Ernest Jones. Instead, they now must send their lowest Round 6 pick.

Is Roger McCreary going to the Pro Bowl? Of course not. But (insert NFL cliche here, like in a game of inches, on any given Sunday, etc.), the difference in the roster upgrade needn't be from worst to Pro Bowl level. The team's two losses stemmed from blocked field goal kicks.

That's all. One minor aspect of two very competitive games led to two defeats. Since the second loss, the entire team has shown signs of dramatic and continuous improvement. Landing McCreary was a minor move in the eyes of NFL analysts. But it could be just enough to galvanize this team into a bona fide Super Bowl contender.

As always, thanks for reading.