Oh my god, you guys, this lag between the end of the season and the draft is positively interminable. So, what better time to rank the 19 drafts of the "St. Louis Rams". I'm including the 1994 draft as well, as the Rams were as good as gone from LA to STL.
If you've read any of my other FanPosts, I utilize AV, which is Approximate Value created by Pro Football Reference which places a numerical value on each player's season. Approximate is right in the name, so understand that it is not exact, but approximate. But, working with the numbers allows us to evaluate players across positions and eras, perfect for evaluating drafts.
I'm piggybacking on some research that you can check out in my previous FanPosts. There are two different ways that I calculate the draft results, first year by year and then by career. Since players drafted recently haven't finished their careers, we cannot judge them by their whole career so we go year by year. Below you will see the chart indicating the amount of AV generated on average each year by a player at each draft slot.
And now, let's look at the same graph by Pick Number, but for an entire career:
Similar idea, but the scales are different.
Consequently, I've judged the 1994 - 2007 drafts via the CarAV graph and the 2008 - 2013 drafts via the AV year by year graph. Now, for the key, which Rams drafts have been the best?
Year | Total |
1997 | 54.17429 |
1999 | 49.33396 |
1994 | 39.20203 |
2005 | 30.67179 |
2004 | 27.72908 |
2012 | 26.01557 |
1996 | 23.43918 |
1998 | 12.75848 |
2013 | 11.75379 |
2011 | 0.077391 |
1995 | -1.10358 |
2009 | -2.15483 |
2003 | -3.81674 |
2008 | -6.03958 |
2000 | -9.11399 |
2001 | -9.72183 |
2010 | -19.3486 |
2002 | -50.218 |
2007 | -60.4524 |
2006 | -115.781 |
The best draft the St. Louis Rams have had was 1997: Orlando Pace, Dexter McCleon and Ryan Tucker in the 1st three rounds. The worst was 2006: Tye Hill, Joe Klopfenstein, Claude Wroten, Jon Alston and Dominique Byrd in the first three rounds.
Let's look at that now in graph form with the information on the presiding General Managers:
Jay Zygmunt was the WORST! And the funny thing was that we all knew it all along. Three drafts like 2006, 2007 and 2008 will really set a franchise a long way back. Billy Devaney really had 3 average-ish drafts, but with how bad the Rams were already, they failed to offer any improvement.
And a little bit of trivia for those of whom made it this far in the post - the worst draft pick of the St. Louis Rams? Jason Smith, but you knew that already. The best? Isaac Bruce.
For those of whom are interested, here's the raw data, here's a link to the Google Doc, so I can save you from pasting in a huge graph.