Life’s pretty good when you’re one of the best teams in the NFL, with a stocked depth chart that’s the envy of the league. Life’s even better when you’ve got the flexibility to game out scenarios to pay off years down the line.
Put another way: the Los Angeles Rams were already making plans for 2028 while everyone else is focused on 2026. Now that the Rams have Myles Garrett in uniform, too? Well, it almost doesn’t seem fair.
The Rams, of course, began the new league year on Monday by dealing away 2024 DROY Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round draft pick, a 2028 second-round pick and a 2029 third-rounder to Cleveland in order to claim Garrett.
You can argue or debate whether the Rams gave away too much to get Garrett, but what’s indisputable is this: Los Angeles, which was four points away from a Super Bowl berth last year, just got their hands on a guy who might just be the best player in the NFL. And if Garrett is able to help Los Angeles win a Super Bowl eight months from now, well, who cares how much they had to give up?
The Rams pursue a counterintuitive “eff them picks” strategy in building toward championships, using first-rounders like free roulette wheel spins, dealing them away long before draft day for proven players. In the last 10 years, the Rams have traded eight of their first-round picks prior to the draft. Their returns have included Jalen Ramsey and Matthew Stafford, whom we’ll return to in a moment. And the payoff is obvious: seven playoff appearances, one Super Bowl victory, two NFC championship wins. First-rounders? Who needs first-rounders?
In fact, the only two times Roger Goodell has announced a Rams first-round pick in the last 10 years are for Verse, who was just dealt away, and for … Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson.
You’ll recall that the selection of Simpson at No. 13 five weeks ago hit the draft sector of the NFL world like a thunderbolt, throwing off hot takes in every direction. Did the Rams reach for Simpson? Would he be coming for Stafford’s job? Did head coach Sean McVay and GM Les Snead finally get too cute for their own good?
“We’ve always known that there will be a time when we need our future quarterback,” Snead said shortly after the draft. “And the way the stars aligned in this draft, that was the opportunity we felt like we should take.”
That selection of Simpson, in a way, opened the door for the Rams to be able to get Garrett. Why? Because while the 2027 draft is expected to be quarterback-rich — Arch Manning, Dante Moore, Julian Sayin and others could dominate the conversation — Los Angeles, barring catastrophe, would not be in a draft position to pick any of those players; the Rams will likely finish with a high-20s, low-30s pick for 2027.
So instead of waiting for whatever scraps were left late in the first round of next year’s draft, they shored up the future of the quarterback position this year, then used that (likely) low first-round pick in 2027 to address the now by adding the best defensive player in football. It was a brilliant reverse sleight of hand employed by Snead and McVay.
Nothing is certain in the NFL, not finishing positions and not draft picks. This time last year, no one projected the Patriots to make a Super Bowl run, nobody regarded Simpson or No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza as first-round talent, and yet here we are. But what the Rams have done is inject as much certainty and continuity over the next two seasons as is possible in the NFL. The rest of the league will need to spend that time catching up fast.