In the afterglow of 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 them picks — we’ll use them to go 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 a lot of work to do to get back to contending for the NFC West title in 2023.
“I will admit that any time you probably say something like that … you’re going to eat those words at some point in time,” Snead said on Thursday, via Gary Klein of the L.A. Times. Snead noted he was having fun with the meme. “If we truly believed in effing them picks in that sense of the word, we’d just give them to our division opponents ...
“But we’ve definitely taken the draft serious. We think it’s really the heartbeat, right, of the franchise.”
Sneed added, “I truly intended to say, ‘We effed these picks to win Los Angeles a Super Bowl championship.’ … So, I always knew I was going to eat those words at some point.”
The Rams famously have not made a first-round selection since trading up to take Jared Goff at No. 1 overall in 2016. Snead said he’s projecting that L.A. will have 10 selections in 2023 when the compensatory picks are awarded. Snead has termed this offseason a “remodel” rather than a “rebuild.”
The club could finally have a first-round pick in 2024 — if Snead doesn’t trade it away first.
“Getting back to having some first-rounders, getting back to having second- and third-rounders will be advantageous,” Snead said. “Where we’re at, probably from a roster standpoint, that will be healthy for us to add younger players, players on their rookie contracts that are going to become 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 his 11 seasons, with a 60-38 record since McVay arrived in 2017.