Like you, I bemoaned the end of the NFL season on Tuesday. The Super Bowl comes and goes and leaves more than a Monday morning hangover.
It leaves a massive void in the sports sphere – and a massive dent in the Monday work production. According to Fortune magazine, U.S. companies lost $6.5 billion in productivity because folks like you and me watched through the end of the Super Bowl on Sunday night – and kicked back a couple of extra CoColas if our team (and bets) won or lost.
But, in truth, does the NFL ever end? Wait, don’t answer that.
Of course not.
The Underwear Olympics (aka the NFL scouting combine) are in less than two weeks.
Free agency follows that. Then comes the NFL draft.
For years the popularity of the draft has forced leagues to realize that the transaction is becoming as popular as action. The reasoning that this pick or that signing or those trades are ever-growing in appeal is that unlike the games, which have winners and losers, every fan can convince themselves that their side of the deal or draft was right.
Games deal in results; transactions are centered on hope.
But have the Los Angeles Rams and their Super Bowl victory changed our view on the draft? Will teams emulate the Rams’ M.O. of dealing draft capital – something that was considered an (Arizona) cardinal sin not three years ago – for a win-now push?
Sure, it depends on the team and the cap space, but it makes a ton of sense now that a franchise has won it all by doing it. First-round picks are hardly sure things, and there are superstars to be found on days two and three of the annual picking of college stars.
Heck, Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp was the Super Bowl MVP, and he was barely noticed coming out of high school and was picked 69th overall in 2017 – a year when three receivers (Corey Davis, Mike Williams and John Ross) went in the top 10 – and that turned out pretty well. Even defensive star Aaron Donald, only the best player on the field Sunday and possibly in the NFL, was only the 13th overall pick in 2014.
AP file photo by Kyusung Gong / Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead was rewarded for the risk he took by trading draft picks for players who helped lead the franchise to a Super Bowl title this season.So you can see the logic in dealing picks for players, aiming to win in season rather than winning the offseason. It was so clear that Rams general manager Les Snead wore a T-shirt that read “F#$% them picks” to the team’s victory celebration Wednesday.
What Snead lacks in tact – and fashion sense – he made up with bravery in his day job.
Sadly, in a game that demands courage and rewards risk, far too many front offices will almost assuredly not follow the Rams’ path. And the reason is fear. Because making those trades demands guts, and the risk is measured with your jobs as NFL front office folks.
You make deals like the Rams did – multiple first-round picks and more for Jalen Ramsey and Matt Stafford, as well as a second- and a third-round pick for Von Miller – and you fall anywhere short of the Super Bowl, you get a pink slip.
You miss on multiple draft pinks, you still get time for development and could even blame the failures of those picks on the coaching malfeasance.
But fortune favors the brave, and the Rams followed their own NFL yellow brick road.
And their reward for that courage was the Super Bowl crown.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and read his 5-at-10 every Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. at timesfreepress.com.