Rams seen as a team that could move up. What does a trade look like?

It seems very possible that the Rams are a team that could move up in the draft. How much would a trade cost?

The Los Angeles Rams are a team in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft in which nobody seems to know what they want to do. This is the first time that they’ve had a first-round pick in the Sean McVay era. Over the past several years, the Rams have been extremely aggressive, especially with their first-round pick. It’s possible that aggressiveness is being used against them in draft conversations, but at the end of the day, they are a team that could move up and try to maximize the value of their pick in the first round.

On a conference call Wednesday, NFL Media’s Daniel Jeremiah discussed the possibility of the Rams moving up. Said Jeremiah,

“Maybe you get the Rams who wanted to move up there for a tackle…They have the ammunition if they want to move up. I would think with a guy like Byron Murphy, knowing who just left the building, if Byron Murphy started to drift a little bit, I would think that would be an obvious one for them to target to go up, as well as if one of those three edge rushers, if they have a preference on those guys, I wouldn’t sleep on that as well.”

Benjamin Allbright who occasionally will have a scoop said that he is hearing about the Rams possibly being a team looking to move up in the first round.

With 11 selections, including an extra third-round pick, the Rams certainly have the ammo to move up if that’s something that they want to do. However, with 11 picks, they also have the ability to build and replace some of the depth on their current roster. In the case that the Rams do move up, they will need to find the balance between building depth and adding to the top of the roster. The question also becomes how far up are they willing to go and which players are worth that kind of move?

Last season, the Pittsburgh Steelers moved up from 17 to 14 with the New England Patriots for Broderick Jones. The Steelers gave up just a fourth-round pick in that trade. In the case that Olu Fashanu, Dallas Turner, Byron Murphy, or even Troy Fautanu falls past 12, the Rams could look to make a similar trade. That type of move may only cost their third-round compensatory pick that they acquired due to Raheem Morris getting hired as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons as well as maybe a fifth-round pick.

However, the Chicago Bears moved up from 20 to 11 in 2021 with the New York Giants, giving up their fifth-round selection as well as a first and fourth-round pick in 2022. That seems like a steeper price, but it’s also a relatively comparable draft class to the one in 2024.

Where this gets interesting is with a trade up into the top-10. There has been some speculation that the Giants could be a team looking to trade back at number six. Giants general manager Joe Schoen said during his press conference that there has been some interest in their pick. The Rams also obviously have some relationships with the Falcons given that Morris is there and Snead’s history within that organization. That leaves the possibility of potentially moving up to the eighth overall pick.

Jeremiah touched on this possibility when speaking on the Jaguars who are at 17 and them potentially moving up for a player like Odunze. Said Jeremiah,

“You’re looking at the Jags and their collection here, they’ve got a couple 4s. They’ve got their 2 and their 3 there. If they were going to move up —I don’t have the chart in front of me. It’s going to be decently costly to go all the way up there to get Rome Odunze.”

The fact of the matter is, it’s not very often that we see teams inside the top 10 and outside the top-15 move up or down that far. In cases like this, the cost tends to be prohibitive and the team moving down may not see the value in moving that many spots.

In 2017, the Kansas City Chiefs moved up to 10th overall from 27, giving up a third-round pick and the following year’s first rounder. The closest example here may be the Rams in 2013 when they traded up from 16 to eight for Tavon Austin. In that trade, Snead gave up second, third, and seventh round picks. The Steelers moved from 20 to 10 in 2019, giving up their second and third round pick as well as a third the following year.

With this draft class as good as it is inside the top-10, that may raise the cost even higher. The Rams may be looking at a Bears-Giants deal that requires a first-round pick the following year in addition to other premier selections.

At the end of the day, it takes two to tango. The Rams may be a team looking to move up, but finding a team willing to move that far down and then finding a deal that makes sense for both sides becomes the challenge. We’ll see what Snead and co. end up doing, but it may be an interesting draft night.