Les Snead is on the Hot Seat

Now that the Super Bowl is over the off season can officially begin. For the Los Angeles Rams, the season ended officially in January, although some would argue it ended much sooner than that. The Rams fired Jeff Fisher, hired Sean McVay and Wade Phillips, and now turn their attention to assessing the roster. Les Snead is entering his fifth season as General Manager after serving two years as Director of Player Personnel for the Atlanta Falcons. He notably made a big splash in his first season by trading the 2nd overall pick to Washington in exchange for a bounty of picks and last season made the reverse move by trading a bunch of picks to Tennessee in order to select Jared Goff.

The picks he acquired from Washington lead to some bright spots including Brandon Brockers, and Janoris Jenkins. Unfortunately, those same picks never produced anyone on offense and he traded up to get Tavon Austin who has been nothing more than a great option on special teams while never developing into a number one receiver despite Snead paying him like one. He did draft Todd Gurley despite conventional wisdom saying it was a bad pick because of Gurley’s knee injury but it worked out as Gurley had an outstanding rookie campaign. Last season Gurley regressed but that was due in large part to a shaky offensive line and getting little quarterback production from Case Keenum and Jared Goff.

Speaking of Goff, it is still baffling that the Rams would feel compelled to trade so many picks to draft Jared Goff considering they saw what happened to Washington when they blew those picks on Robert Griffin III. Coming out of college, Goff wasn’t looked at even remotely the same way Griffin was and what’s worse is that the other top quarterback in that draft, Carson Wentz showed a lot more life with the Eagles than Goff showed with the Rams. If they had just stood pat with their fifteenth overall pick they could’ve taken one of the receivers or offensive linemen that were highly coveted and maybe even taken Dak Prescott in a later round. He also is responsible for Jeff Fisher being hired as head coach and while he finally cut the cord this season, he should’ve seen that it wasn’t working a lot sooner than he did.

The hiring of Sean McVay and Wade Phillips have bought him a little time but how much would depend on if the new offensive staff can get anything out of Goff. Snead has limited draft resources this season and not a whole lot of marquee free agents that could help the Rams make any kind of a leap. He has to decide whether or not to retain Kenny Britt and Trumaine Johnson with their 40 million in cap space. If Snead can’t find a way to make the Rams even remotely better it might be time to blow it all up and start over again.