One winner and one big surprise loser from Rams-Titans blockbuster
If you’re a Tennessee Titans fan, stand up and cheer today. Your new general manager did good.
The Titans’ trade with the Los Angeles Rams was a blockbuster, out of the blue with the draft still a ways off and everyone still buzzing about Kobe Bryant and the Golden State Warriors. The Titans traded the first overall pick for a bounty, getting two firsts, two seconds, and two thirds while giving up No. 1 overall, a fourth- and a sixth-round pick. The Titans now have six picks in the top 76, and an extra first and third for next year.
Let’s get the Rams’ side of this out of the way because that one is easy to analyze. They needed a quarterback desperately. General manager Les Snead and coach Jeff Fisher have to feel some pressure to win soon or lose their jobs. So what do they care if they sent away a ton of picks? They weren’t going to win much (or be around much longer) with Case Keenum, so roll the dice. Assuming the Rams are sold that Carson Wentz or Jared Goff is a franchise quarterback, then they did what they had to do. They couldn’t go into a first season in Los Angeles with Keenum as their quarterback, and everyone knew that. If the quarterback works out as they hope, the deal is fine for them.
But I’d still take the Titans’ side. The franchise made a huge leap forward on Thursday. They already had their quarterback in Marcus Mariota. No matter how good offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil will be, they need a lot more than that to be competitive. By adding picks 15, 43, 45 and 76 in this draft, and an extra first- and third-round pick in 2017, the Titans can put many quality pieces around Marcus Mariota. They are a huge winner in this trade. No matter if the Rams land Wentz and he’s the NFL’s next superstar quarterback (and if he is, the Rams are winners in the deal too), the Titans won’t regret the move. It was brilliant maneuvering from general manager Jon Robinson. Well done.
But there is a loser in this deal, and it’s a franchise used to losing: the Cleveland Browns, who have the second pick.
The Browns had to know this was a possibility, that a team desperate at quarterback would give up a load of picks to get ahead of them. But it still required a team willing to give up six (!) top 100 picks to do it. The cost is why it’s so rare for the first pick to get traded — the first pick hasn’t been moved since 2004 in the Eli Manning-Giants deal, which technically should count even though the San Diego Chargers drafted Manning before trading him — but the Rams did it. And the Browns don’t have their choice of quarterbacks anymore. It feels like 2012, when the Browns came close to trading for the pick that became Robert Griffin III, but lost out.
Maybe it all works out for the Browns anyway, and they prefer the quarterback who the Rams won’t take. If Los Angeles takes Wentz and Cleveland wanted Goff all along, everyone’s happy. And make no mistake, the Browns will tell you that was the case no matter who they draft. But it’s possible the Browns really liked Wentz (and the consensus Thursday seemed to be the Rams will take Wentz) and after months of thinking they’d have their choice of quarterbacks, will have to settle for Goff. Or vice versa. Or, if they don’t love the quarterback who falls to them, they’ll have to move on and examine other draft options, leaving fixing the almost 20-year-old quarterback problem for another day (Griffin isn’t the long-term answer).
Goff or Wentz — or Tunsil or Jalen Ramsey or a trade or whatever the Browns end up doing with the pick — could be a perennial Pro Bowler in Cleveland, but at this moment, having the choice of the top two quarterbacks in the draft presumably snatched from them just seems so Cleveland.
There are other winners and losers from the deal. The San Diego Chargers might end up drafting Tunsil, considered for a long time to be the favorite to go No. 1, with the third pick. That would be a perfect match for San Diego, a home-run pick. Then the Dallas Cowboys could step to the plate and take Ramsey, who many think is the best overall player in the draft, at No. 4.
A team like the Philadelphia Eagles, which has been working out quarterbacks, has to be a little sick that their rumored quest to move up and perhaps select one of the quarterbacks was thwarted — and the Rams used the second-round pick the Eagles sent them in the Sam Bradford trade to do it.
The reverberations from Thursday morning’s deal were felt in many NFL cities, and obviously in Nashville, Los Angeles and Cleveland. What a fun trade.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
