Gregg Rosenthal drops McVay/Snead out of his Top 5 HC/GM combos

There was a time in the very recent past when the LA Rams combination of GM Les Snead and HC Sean McVay were considered the elite of the NFL, a combination of synergy when it came to setting the cadence and strategy of the entire LA Rams organization, and it turn, serving as the pace car for other NFL teams.

But the times they are a'changing in the NFL. The LA Rams, for the second time under this dynamic duo, have given plenty of cause for second-guessing the urgency to compensate key players. Around the time that the team was making noise in appearing in Super Bowl LIII, the LA Rams signed QB Jared Goff, WR Brandin Cooks, and RB Todd Gurley to lucrative contracts. They were all off the team by 2021, three years later.

Now the LA Rams are at it again, signing veterans ILB Bobby Wagner and WR Allen Robinson for 2022, and paying WR Cooper Kupp, QB Matthew Stafford, and DL Aaron Donald, and having just resigned DB Jalen Ramsey. A year after that, Wagner and Ramsey are no longer with the team, the Rams are pushing to trade Robinson, and the team's financial situation is such that it will be a lean 2023 before the team wades back into the NFL Free Agency market in 2024 with any real spending money.

McVay/Snead fall out of Top-5

As a result of the LA Rams strategy involving frequent 180-degree reversals of a player's fit and affordability, NFL Insider Gregg Rosenthal has dropped the combination of LA Rams GM Les Snead and HC Sean McVay out of his Top-5 listing, but as the sixth-ranked pair, they remain a duo poised to set new NFL trends. Rosenthal's NFL GM Power Rankings dropped on Thursday, April 13, 2023, and there is already a buzz stirring.

He jumps right into it with his assessment of McVay/Snead with this statement:

"The problem isn't that the Rams went all in. It's that they immediately erased their flexibility after the title by signing their three biggest stars to extensions." - per Greg Rosenthal in his NFL GM Power Rankings

The Rams front office does not play follow the leader. Rather, the team leverages every advantage at its disposal to ensure a competitive team takes the field. Since no other NFL team runs 45 players on their roster before an NFL Draft, nobody knows what to make of the Rams strategy this season.

That's exactly how the Rams like it, as that confusion gives them what amounts to a three-year headstart on other teams if this all pans out. 2023 will be the first year of the Rams roster going ultra youth. 2024 will be the second year of the Rams youth movement, and if successful will start to draw interest from other NFL teams. 2025 is likely the first year that another team will adopt the Rams radical methods. By that time, the Rams hope to be a cheap and highly competitive team once more.