LA Rams 2023 NFL Draft strategy will continue well beyond draft day

The LA Rams are a team with plenty of holes in their 90-man roster. At 44 players still as March 2023 winds down, the LA Rams are a dozen players shy of the next NFL team in terms of the least number of players under contract, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who have 56 players signed. The Washington Commanders, a team with the most players signed under contract for the 2023 NFL season, has 75 players signed up, which is an incredible 29 players more than the Rams have on their roster right now. While we all know that the LA Rams will end up with 90 players, we may or may not have thought much about how the team will do so.

My belief is that the Rams will draft a dozen or more players during the 2023 NFL Draft, and then round out the roster by signing 30+ undrafted free-agent rookies. And that is a huge number. Are LA Rams fans prepared for this?

Undrafted rookies may flood the Rams roster

The largest undrafted rookies group that i recall were the 22 undrafted players signed to the Rams roster after the 2020 NFL Draft. That class was loaded with players who would either land on the Rams' 53-man roster or on the practice squad. And as a matter of reference, that class did end up landing a few undrafted rookies on the 53-player active roster, including RB Xavier Jones, WR Tristan Jackson, and DL Eric Banks,

Isn't it ironic that even before the LA Rams enter the 2023 NFL Draft, their latest roster purge has left this team as the youngest NFL team roster? The Rams will surely get younger, as the team has 11 picks and currently 45 open roster spots to fill. It's even more ironic because that is diametrically opposed to the lame national narrative that the Rams have no picks and have gotten too old to compete.

So, what's it all really about? The LA Rams are not packing up their toys and going home. Not at all. In fact, this could pan out to be an incredibly effective innovation to roster building. After all, I don't think that many would argue that the majority of LA Rams players compete for the team on a four-year rookie contract, and then many must find their fair market value in the NFL Free Agency market. That all seems quite inefficient, doesn't it? Well, would if I told you . . .