St. Louis Rams re-draft and the ghosts of busted picks past

Here's a news flash for you: the St. Louis Rams didn't draft very well until 2009. Good thing I told you that; otherwise, you would have never known. Rick Reilly at ESPN has a "redraft" for the years 2006-2008, and the Rams don't fare too well during that period of time. 

Tye Hill, the Rams' first-round pick in 2006, ranks as an undrafted free agent in Reilly's re-take. Undrafted free agent...we've gotten better cornerback play out of undrafted free agents than that. Be nice to the undrafted free agents. The Rams traded down that year, allowing the Broncos to get Cutler, a move many fans decried as the QB situation deteriorated in St. Louis after the 2006 season. Drafting a first-round QB at that point didn't make a lot of sense. A better post-trade pick would have been C Nick Mangold, CB Antonio Cromartie, LB Chad Greenway or WR Santonio Holmes. All of those were positions where the Rams needed to start adding back talent. Imagine the roster today if they would have drafted one of those players instead.

Adam Carriker, the Rams 2007 first-round pick ranks as a fourth-rounder. Hey, the Rams were able to move up in the fifth and seventh rounds of the draft thanks to that trade. Score! Hindsight pick: hands down it has to be CB Darrelle Revis, who was picked right after Carriker and ranks as the second best player in the draft per Reilly's analysis.

Things started to get better in 2008 when the Rams picked Chris Long second overall. Reilly considers that a little high, though Long does maintain first-round value. Interestingly enough, he puts Detroit's Cliff Avril, originally picked at #92, as the highest ranked DE. I'd have to disagree with that. Avril has 1.5 more sacks than Long over the same period of time. Long has 92 tackles to Avril's 66. Long has more starts than Avril, which makes the stats standout a bit more, but you can flip an argument about the number of starts around too. 

There's some good news here, the Seahawks did worse than the Rams in these rankings...the only team to land below the Rams.