Turf Show Times
The Rams wanted to draft Braden Fiske so bad that they traded too much to get him
Did the Los Angeles Rams go too far in their desire to draft Florida State defensive end Braden Fiske in the second round on Friday? Probably, and a graph by ESPN’s analytics expert Seth Walder has visual proof of it.
When the Rams traded up from 52 to 39 last week and the details came out that L.A. gave up next year’s second round pick, I thought there must have been an error in the report. Teams do not trade second round picks to move up 13 spots in the second round. But Rams GM Les Snead did exactly that on Friday and there are two reasons that it really made no sense.
First, here is Walder’s graph that shows that per ESPN’s draft pick valuations, moving up from 52 to 39 by giving up a second and pick 155 is the biggest “overpay” by any draft trade in at least the last six years. Second place doesn’t look that close and third place is much lower:
In 2019, the Saints traded up from 62 to 48 by giving up a sixth and a future second round pick to get center Erik McCoy. The Dolphins eventually got back pick 56 in the 2020 draft, so it’s like they traded 56 and 62 to get to 48 with a 4th-6th pick swap.
Would you trade picks 56 and 62 to get to 48?
Some would say that yes, McCoy was a Pro Bowl center last year and that’s good enough to justify the trade. But it also shows that the Saints made the cardinal mistake of falling in love with one prospect and doing so in the middle of the second round, which is when the players are not separated by much, if any value. I understand New Orleans was looking at the board and McCoy was the only center in the draft they felt could start for them, but they could have also waited to see if McCoy dropped or filled that need with a serviceable center in the meantime.
It cost them a second round pick in 2020, a pick they could have used on a center. In fact, the Saints drafted interior offensive lineman Cesar Ruiz in the first round in 2020, so it’s like the McCoy pick didn’t even entirely fill their needs.
That’s the Saints case, but now we’re back to the Rams.
The Rams clearly fell in love with Fiske, which could be a mistake. The fact is that most analysts said that the 2024 class had a significant drop-off in value after the top-16 to 20 picks or so, which means that to the majority of NFL teams there wasn’t a high grade on Fiske. What the Rams probably saw was defensive tackle Johnny Newton went 36th, defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat went 38th, and Les Snead was worried that he wouldn’t get any of the defensive linemen...
