At the end of the 2022 season, the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, Les Snead sat at a crossroads.
The bill from the "eff them picks" era came due and the amount looked to be much more than he could pay for. While his audacious move to trade every first-round pick from 2017 to 2023 led to the acquisitions of Jared Goff, Matthew Stafford, Brandin Cooks, and Jalen Ramsey, key pieces in the team's run to Super Bowl LIII and their victory in Super Bowl LVI, it left the cupboard bare, especially on defense.
Problems for Snead compounded as he was without the picks he traded for a half-year rental of Von Miller while the signing of Bobby Wagner turned out to be a failure. With the majority of his money tied up with veteran players who were either hurt or not performing to standard, the 2022 season was a dud that almost saw Sean McVay trade in his coaching career for a lucrative sportscasting opportunity.
Snead took his gamble, he won and now he had to pull off an even bigger gamble yet. Rebuild the Rams without making it look like a rebuild.
The Wall Street Journal released a recent article talking about how the 2024 Rams' defense is powered by a bunch of college football rejects. Jared Verse was overlooked before he became a sack machine at Albany, Braden Fiske was once an unknown defensive tackle from Western Michigan, Kobie Turner was at Wake Forest, Jaylen McCollough, Omar Speights, and Josh Wallace are all undrafted rookie free agents and most of the Rams' defensive secondary consists of day three picks and castoffs.
The Rams' defense is the most bang for your buck unit in all of football. Captain Quentin Lake played every snap through 16 games and is a sixth-round pick from UCLA. The game-changing Kamren Curl was a pariah in Washington and in Los Angeles, he's a leader who sparked the Rams' midseason turnaround with a defensive touchdown against the Raiders. He's on a two year/ nine million dollar deal.
In fact, Darious Williams, a 2018 UDFA out of UAB, has the team's biggest contract on defense, sitting at three years for $22.5 million. Williams is one of the nine highest-paid Rams, the other eight play offense and are paid more than him.
Snead built a defensive line that has led in rookie sacks in back-to-back years for under seven million dollars total against the cap in 2024. To put that in comparison, Aaron Donald's cap hit in 2023 was 26 million alone.
Outside of Williams, zero defensive starters remain from Super Bowl LVI. In fact, only Williams, Michael Hoecht and Bobby Brown III are the only defensive players remaining from the 2021 season.
Les Snead, despite having no financial flexibility and only one first-round pick, built the brightest defensive unit since Seattle's Legion of Boom in under three years. With over 50 million in cap space to spend in 2025, Snead will have his pick of luxury free agents.
Out of the 23 current defensive players on the Rams' 53-man roster, 12 were drafted by the Rams. Out of those 12 players, seven of them are day three picks, and three of them are third-round picks. Verse and Fiske were selected in the first and second rounds during the 2024 NFL Draft.
Out of the remaining 11 defenders, seven of them came into the NFL as an UDFA signed by the Rams. Some players either left and came back or remained with the organization during their time in the NFL. The total cap hit of the four other defenders who were either signed as a free agent or claimed on waivers in 2024 is just under 6.2 million.
The Rams also have five day three/ UDFA defenders on injured reserve, giving Les Snead a near-perfect hit rate on signed/ drafted defenders over the past three seasons. With a playoff game against the high-flying Vikings serving as a launching board for the NFL's next legendary defense, Sean McVay signed through 2026 and over 50 million in cap space entering 2025, Snead gets to sit back and enjoy the greatest rebuild in NFL history as his team makes their sixth playoff appearance in eight years.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/rams/ as Bang for Your Buck: How Les Snead Financed the NFL's Next Dominant Defense.