We still have a month before the draft starts (four weeks from Thursday, to be precise), so most of the calls happening now between teams are table-setters.
The Texans own the first pick, so if there was a particular player you had to have, they’d be the first call. But the Rams, with the second and 13th, are open for business.
Rams General Manager Les Snead told Greg Bedard of SI.com that he’s had some “flirtatious calls,” from teams already, wanting to know what it would take to move out of the second spot if a certain player was there.
The Rams G.M. is in this spot because of the bounty he received from Washington in the Robert Griffin III trade. But it doesn’t appear that any of this year’s first-round quarterbacks will command (or deserve) that kind of frenzy, so the market may be muted.
But Snead pointed out that there are trade-up targets who don’t throw the ball.
If you start with the assumption that Jadeveon Clowney is the first pick (which may not be a safe assumption), that leaves tackles Jake Matthews and Greg Robinson, linebacker Khalil Mack and wide receiver Sammy Watkins as the level of player teams will make a move for.
“I actually think there’s more than one player that people would want to move up for,” Snead said. “I just don’t know what they’d want to give to move up,” Snead said. “At the top maybe there’s four or five players who were one step or one notch ahead of the very good and sometimes a team might say we need to get that guy. You don’t know the value of what people would be willing to give. The fact that there could be multiple teams eyeing one of those guys could drive up the price a little bit.”
The Falcons are one of the usual suspects, and they sorely need help on the offensive line and more impact defenders. But other teams could make a call in the next month, hoping to get beyond flirting with Snead.