The 2022 NFL Draft begins on Thursday, and for the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams, they will not make their first selection until the third round (No. 104 overall).
Despite not owning a pick on Day 1, the Rams still have eight selections to make and once again will be looking to find contributors in the later rounds. L.A. has found success with this strategy in recent years and head coach Sean McVay expects that to be the case this time around as well.
McVay joined Rams general manager Les Snead in a video conference on Tuesday, where they discussed their approach for the upcoming 2022 NFL Draft.
Snead revealed the team has four-to-five positions in mind when it’s their turn to pick on Friday night, per Stu Jackson of TheRams.com:
“The goal and the vision is to engineer a process where you then go about setting the board and getting that right, and trying to eliminate some of the bias of knowing what your needs are, because what you probably don’t want to have happen is that the position of need, you all of a sudden have a lot more players at that position just because you need them,” Snead said. “And at that point, in this case, right, picking 104, we’ll probably have four to five positions that we’d like to pick from. And if we’ve done the correct work previously, then when we get to 104, we’ll be able to look up at the board, and hopefully at one of those four to five positions, there will be a favorite player of ours, and you go from there.”
Among the areas of the Rams roster that could use some depth are pass rushers and defensive backs. L.A. of course lost Von Miller and Darious Williams in free agency, but upgraded elsewhere, including at linebacker by signing Bobby Wagner.
With plenty of difference-makers expected to be available when the Rams are on the clock, they could easily decide to make the pick. However, Snead did not rule out the possibility of trading back and acquiring more draft capital.
