The Los Angeles Rams head into the 2020 NFL Draft without a lot of picks, their first pick in the draft coming in the second round at 52nd overall.
The Rams went into ‘Super Bowl or Bust’ mode in 2018 and have since paid the price.
The Rams acquired Ndamukong Suh in free agency and picked up Brandin Cooks, Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib via trades in the 2018 off season.
Head coach Sean McVay felt this team was a few players away from a Super Bowl and did all he could to get these additions. The Rams also tied their running back Todd Gurley to a four year contact worth $60 million.
The Rams had the longest unbeaten run in the 2018 season and reached Super Bowl 53. They ultimately fell short, losing 13-3 in the lowest scoring Super Bowl in history.
The Rams were expected to compete again in the 2019 season but missed out on the play offs altogether, finishing 9-7. This is despite adding one of the NFL’s top corners in Jalen Ramsey midway through the 2019 season.
They finished third in the NFC West and saw their division rivals in the San Francisco 49ers reach Super Bowl 54 in Miami.
With the departures that have taken place in the 2020 off season and the improvements made to their division rivals, the Rams are in danger of going from division winners to last in their division in just two years.
The Rams have been hugely mismanaged and they have paid the price. They’ve have had a mass exodus and have seen many of their players depart.
Todd Gurley, Dante Fowler, Cory Littleton, Clay Matthews, Greg Zuerlein, Brandin Cooks and Nickell Robey-Coleman have all departed the franchise, leaving fans wondering how these players will be replaced.
The decision to allow Gurley to leave despite giving him the aforementioned $60 million contract in the 2018 off season is a hugely disappointing one for fans and personnel, especially given the season Gurley had in 2018.
Gurley ran for 17 touchdowns in 2018 and 1,251 yards but only ran for 857 yards and 12 touchdowns, a huge drop off for the running back who will look to get back to his 2018 self at his new home in Atlanta.
Gurley’s production largely dropped off due to an injury he appeared to be carrying in the 2018 season play offs and his lack of involvement in those wins over the Cowboys and the Saints on their way to losing to the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The decision also to give Jared Goff a contract worth $134 million has also been question by many, especially due to his poor Super Bowl performance and subsequently his drop off in 2019.
Goff threw for 32 touchdowns and rushed for an additional 2 in 2018 but in 2019, Goff threw for 22 touchdowns and looked nowhere the same player as we saw in 2018.
There appears to be a massive case of mismanagement from the Rams with everything from trading away their picks to get players as they did with both Talib and Jalen Ramsey and also overpaying players for them to drop off no less than a year later.
In the case of both Talib and Gurley, they both aren’t around less than 2 years after joining the Rams.
The Rams are functionally a mess and this has seen Sean McVay dealing with a much different challenge to the one he faced in his first two years in his role as Rams head coach.
McVay is still a brilliant head coach and will now be faced with a team that may not get into the play offs for a few years more.
This is especially concerning, considering the fact that they gave away their first and fourth round picks in 2021 to get Ramsey.
They will have no first round pick for two years in a row and they appear to have overspent have lots of dead cap space through releasing Clay Matthews and Todd Gurley.
The future is not bright with the Rams but a head coach in Sean McVay gives them a chance to still make the play offs. However, their overspending and the amount of players that have gone out of the door in the 2020, you have to question the management of the franchise from above.
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