After 2 Super Bowl appearances in 4 years, will other teams copy the Rams' aggressive roster-building?
Yahoo Sports' Charles Robinson & Frank Schwab discuss the Los Angeles Rams reaching their second Super Bowl in four years. After aggressive trades for Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey & Von Miller and the risky signing of Odell Beckham, Jr., will other teams follow suit and trade draft assets for known blue-chip stars?
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Video Transcript
[CHEERING]
FRANK SCHWAB: I really wonder if the Rams totally aggressive style is gonna start rubbing off on other teams. Look, let's be real. If the Green Bay Packers are more aggressive and tried to get Odell Beckham, are they in the Super Bowl right now? Maybe. Like, I mean, look at how Odell played down the stretch.
CHARLES ROBINSON: How about the Chiefs?
FRANK SCHWAB: Chiefs? The Chiefs too. The Rams are just like they operate a different way than every other NFL team. They don't care about draft picks. They're just gonna live for today. Whatever happens tomorrow, happens tomorrow. We'll figure it out, but we're gonna try to win today.
And they're not in the Super Bowl that Odell Beckham having 100 yards today, probably not without Von Miller on that defense, definitely not without Matthew Stafford playing quarterback. They pushed all their chips in the middle of the table, and I wonder if other teams are gonna say, yeah, maybe this fourth round pick that we're not giving up for this trade deadline acquisition-- maybe we're being dumb. Look at what the Rams did.
In this league, it's so year to year too. I mean, it's not like, oh, we have a five-year plan. There ain't no five-year plan. Nobody's around five years. I mean, you've got to live for today, and I think that's a fascinating subplot in the Super Bowl about just how aggressive the Rams were and if that's going to be at least maybe not the norm, but other teams picking up on that team building.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, and it's a story of two different ways to build a franchise, by the way, when you talk about these--
FRANK SCHWAB: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
CHARLES ROBINSON: --two very different owners in Stan Kroenke and Mike Brown, OK?
FRANK SCHWAB: But what I will say this about the Bengals. Look, we make fun of the Bengals for being cheap, right? Look, DJ Reader was not a cheap guy. The last couple of years they made a couple really nice free agent moves for decades. Their cheapest team in the NFL. They didn't want to spend on anybody, but they kind of came out of that shell a little bit. And it's paying off right now.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, I'm thinking more along the lines of particularly when you look at the offense-- how homegrown all that is. It's all of these guys that they picked in the draft. I mean, look, the offensive line could be better. I'm sure that's where they will devote this offseason. But they hit on a lot of picks.
Like, there's some when you start to look at some-- I mean, just the skill positions alone you're like, OK, hit big on the Mixon pick, hit big on all the wide receiver picks. Like, you know, hit huge on the quarterback pick.
The offensive line's not talentless. It needs pieces. They could probably use a veteran anchor. But, you know, you talk about the Rams and whether or not it's gonna be a copycat league. I think you could get some teams that look at the Rams and they go, OK, now we're seeing how this is paid off.
And, by the way, they flipped a Super Bowl roster really fast. Like, when I went through there I asked both McVay and Les Snead about now looking back when you're walking off the Super Bowl field, you're thinking, hey, we're coming back. We got this whole team. And now basically the entire roster has almost changed since that Super Bowl. And I kind of asked him to reflect back on what do they wish they would have emphasized walking off the field that day not knowing what was coming.
But they took draft picks. They took commodities. And they said, you know, we want known entities, and we're gonna go ahead and give up these first round picks for what we know are known entities. And we'll figure the money out, and we'll be top heavy. And we'll put pressure on all our scouts.
Hey, we don't have first-round picks. You need to go find pieces. You need to go out there and find the supplemental pieces to help make up for some of the things that we're shipping off. And I think it's gonna be a really intriguing match-up because it's different.
