USA TODAY sports
After winning Super Bowl LVI last year, Rams general manager Les Snead wore an “F—them picks” short to the club’s championship parade.
He also said from the podium that day, “F the picks – we’re going to use them to win more Super Bowls.”
Now, of course, the Rams are coming off a 5-12 season. While head coach Sean McVay will be back, Los Angeles clearly has work to do to compete for the NFC West title again in 2023.
“I’ll admit that every time you say something like that, eventually you’re going to eat those words,” Snead said of the LA Times’ Gary Klein on Thursday. Snead commented that he was having fun with the meme. “If we really believed in giving them picks in that sense of the word, we would just give them to our division opponents…
“But we definitely took the draft seriously. We think it’s really the heartbeat of the franchise.”
Sneed added, “I really wanted to say, ‘We made this selection to win Los Angeles a Super Bowl championship.’ … So I always knew I would eat those words eventually.”
The Rams notoriously haven’t made a first-round selection since picking Jared Goff No. 1 overall in 2016. Snead said he predicts LA will have 10 selections in 2023 when the compensatory picks are awarded. Snead has referred to this off-season as a “remodel” rather than a “rebuild.”
The club could finally have a first-round pick in 2024 – if Snead doesn’t trade them in first.
“It will be beneficial to have some first rounds again, to have seconds and thirds again,” Snead said. “Where we are right now, probably from a squad perspective, it will be healthy for us to add younger players, players with their rookie contracts who are becoming cogs.
“We’re going to call this Chapter 3 of the Sean McVay era.”
Snead has been with the Rams since 2012 and the team has gone 91-86-1 in its 11 seasons, with a 60-38 record since McVay’s arrival in 2017.