The Los Angeles Rams played horribly against the Green Bay Packers in Week 12, yes they only lost by 8 points to a side who are 9-3, but that masked a lot of problems. Matthew Stafford just has not been able to cope when pressured, the defence and Jalen Ramsey in particular struggled throughout the game and the play calling in the closing minutes was beyond questionable. Of course Stafford and Ramsey got a lot of the blame for the result, but so has the means of getting the two to SoFi Stadium. The LA Rams have been labelled as the latest NFL ‘super team’, a large number of their star players have come to the side through trades, Stafford was acquired from Detroit, Ramsey from Jacksonville, recent trade Von Miller came from the Denver Broncos. The Rams have been shedding their draft picks, so much so that they only have 3 draft picks of their own remaining in 2022, GM Les Snead even got a mug from his kids that said ‘F*ck Those Picks’ on it.
But is it good? Well if you ask Hall of Fame QB Troy Aikman, the answer is a strong no. He was part of Fox’s commentary team for the game this Sunday and stated that he has never seen one of these super teams win the Super Bowl. Of course, Aikman’s career in the NFL would make him value those picks. His Dallas Cowboys notably traded star Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for a haul of draft picks, which they used to turn the down-on-their-luck Cowboys into a dynasty. Minnesota gave up those picks because they thought veteran experience would push them over the edge and give them a Lombardi, but the trade was the start of the end as they didn’t even make the Super Bowl and haven’t since. As noted in an article on the 1974 Steelers, the prevailing attitude in the league since the 1970s is that draft picks are more valuable than trades, the Rams last pursued this course with Hall of Fame Head Coach George Allen, who famously disregarded draft picks, but he was the last to really make this system work and only did so because he was an incredibly talented head coach.
Les Snead would tell you that he and Allen aren’t comparable, that where Allen had disregard for picks, Snead recognises their use and tries to utilise them in a better way. The course LA has been taking doesn’t feel like the Vikings of 1989, or the Rams of the 60s, instead it feels like the moves being made in the modern NBA, and maybe that’s where the term ‘super team’ is coming from in the first place, whether it’s Durant, Harden and Irving (wherever he is) in Brooklyn or LeBron, AD and Westbrook with the Lakers, more and more teams are wanting to get ready-made superstars on their side to form a ‘big three’. It’s an appealing package in the NBA because three (or fewer) top players can drag a team the whole way, this obviously isn’t the case in the NFL. Even if the quarterback is the most significant position in any team sport, a good QB can only do so much if the team around him isn’t good enough.
This is probably why super teams are a relative commodity in the NFL, for a team to win a Super Bowl, there has to be good depth at every position and just assembling the team isn’t enough, you need good luck on the injury front too for any chance of success. The number of high-quality players needed and lack of luxury tax also means you’re fighting a much tougher salary cap. If you instead got these players through the draft, then their rookie contract means they’re much cheaper than trading for an established veteran.
This is where the issue lies with the Rams, it’s essentially a high-risk gamble that leaves little chance for flexibility should any of the major pieces go wrong. Matt Stafford has shown issues under pressure this season, should LA decide they need to move on, they don’t really have much to do that with and if they were that desperate, the market clearly wouldn’t be there for him either. If Ramsey and Miller don’t elevate the defence enough, they don’t have any picks to draft new players or trade for others. The Rams definitely have a championship window, but it’s a short one and once the window has shut, LA will need a full rebuild and some years of being truly bad to get back to this level. Failing to win a Super Bowl in this period will be seen as a major failure, especially by the highly demanding fans that make up the Los Angeles market.
The best trades in the NFL are the ones where the team executing the trade gets great value for the player/s they’re getting. I think of the Patriots trading a 2nd and 7th for Wes Welker and a 4th for Randy Moss in 2007, the Rams getting Marshall Faulk for a 2nd and 5th in 1999 or the 49ers acquiring Steve Young for a 2nd and 4th in 1987, most of these teams though, the ones who went on to win the Lombardi, didn’t throw their entire drafts at teams for veteran players. There is too much value in getting great young players through the draft to do that. The Rams have not been giving out the occasional lower round pick, they’ve been giving up all of their first-round picks from 2020 through to 2024. These trades are not the finishing touches like the examples above, they’re the building blocks. Remember as well that the Rams gave up their 2018 first-round pick for Brandin Cooks too, so they should know the risk involved with trading away these most value of draft positions.
There is a thin line between success and failure in the NFL, and a thin line between genius and stupidity. If the Rams win the Super Bowl with Stafford, Ramsey, Miller and the others they have acquired to get the label ‘super team’, no one will be complaining. GM Les Snead will have just played the league differently and got his reward. Failure though comes with a big cost, because a rebuild will be incredibly hard until at least 2024, Les Snead will instead be a laughing stock who never gets another chance to run a team. Perhaps that’s the real reason we don’t see more of these super teams, because the risk outweighs the rewards for some. Established talents are less of an unknown than draft picks, but they’re only established in their current system and there are unknown risks with bringing them to your side. Whether this works for the Rams or not, there are many problems and challenges with taking this approach that will put many off, especially with how valuable draft picks are, the best teams still get their best players in the draft and won’t let them go despite how good trade offers can be. So even if the Rams claim their second Lombardi, the super team will remain a rarity in the NFL.
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