The Los Angeles Rams will have the No. 19 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. For those that don’t remember, Rams fans have had no reason to watch the first day of the draft for quite some time now. But they finally will this year.
Going back to trades where the Rams acquired Brandin Cooks in 2018, Jalen Ramsey in 2019, and Matthew Stafford in 2021, the Rams have been void of a first-round draft pick since 2016. That means since Sean McVay arrived, he has yet to make a first-round pick for his team. He has won a Super Bowl, though, which is a result of trading a lot of those first-round picks away.
The last first-round pick that the Rams made was for Jared Goff at No. 1 overall in 2016 under then-head coach Jeff Fisher. As we know, Goff would later be used in a trade with the Detroit Lions that brought in Matthew Stafford to replace him, even after the former Cal quarterback led Los Angeles to a Super Bowl.
The Rams are sort of one of the teams to watch in the 2024 NFL Draft, if for nothing else, just to see what they do with their first-round draft pick in eight years. But also, it will be to see which position they value improving the most. Remember, Matthew Stafford is on the wrong side of 30 now and has plenty of mileage on him. Aaron Donald retiring also may have determined where the Rams look now, though.
With that said, let’s look at three players the Rams should target in the 2024 NFL Draft.
There’s no one that can reasonably replace Aaron Donald and the Hall of Fame career he had, especially considering he could have played a few more years at a high level. But the Rams can at least look to find somewhat of a reasonable replacement with Texas’ Byron Murphy II.
Murphy had a 91.5 pass rush grade, an 80.5 run defense grade, and an overall 91.1 defensive grade, per PFF. At 6-foot-1, 305 pounds, he’s a very athletic, strong interior defender, giving him a true pass set pass rush grade of 91.9 and a pass rush win rate of 19.6 percent.
