Turf Show Times
In a deep tight end class, how early should the Rams address a major need on offense?
Heading into the 2025 season and the NFL Draft, the Los Angeles Rams have a need at the tight end position. After Colby Parkinson didn’t have the season that some expected and Tyler Higbee getting older and on the final year of his deal, the Rams would be wise to bring in another young player. That doesn’t mention that they lost Hunter Long in free agency.
It wouldn’t be unheard of for the Rams to take a tight end in the first round. However, an argument could be made that they would be better off waiting until round three to address the position. Still, over the past two years, head coach Sean McVay has made an effort to take a tight end early and come up short. It’s very possible that with Tyler Warren and Colston Loveland in the first round, McVay makes an effort to acquire one of them as well.
Heading into the draft process, one of my goals was to try to match my evaluation process relatively close with how the Rams operate. Obviously, it will never be exact without actually being in the room. At the same time, based on the information that is public and matching player traits with what they’ve drafted in the past, it is possible to get a picture of the type of player the Rams draft and what that process looks like.
One of the big changes that I’ve made this year is placing players into “buckets”. The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue called “Finding Rams” which outlined this bucketing process. Said Rodrigue,
“On his screen, which the scouts cannot see, Snead manipulates what he calls “the call sheet” as they discuss prospects. The sheet looks like a series of rectangles that split players by position into different buckets. There are no round-by-round grades, only four overall tiers into which players are then “bucketed.” By mid-April, all draft-eligible players are split into nine buckets based on the Rams’ finished evaluations, which include the medical and character checks completed in March and, for some, notes from Sugarman’s visits. The buckets aren’t always “rankings” — some are lateral to others.”
Those buckets are broken up into nine different categories which are:
These buckets aren’t rankings or necessarily even tiers. It’s simply a way for scouts to easily visualize the role that they see for a player at the next level and a way to define their fit on the roster. Players can be placed into...
