While it is not easy to believe Rams general manager Les Snead when it comes to quarterbacks, he told reporters Thursday that he has an idea of who he wants to take at No. 1 overall in the draft but there are multiple players in mind.
Rams coach Jeff Fisher reiterated Snead's words shortly after. The two spoke on Thursday afternoon, a few hours after the Rams gave up a first-round pick in 2016, two second-round picks in 2016, a third-round pick in 2016, a first-round pick in 2017 and another third-round pick in 2017 for the No. 1 selection in the 2016 draft, along with a fourth and sixth-round pick in the 2016 draft.
"We do have a few players in mind," Snead said, smirking.
Fisher added: "We've been doing this a long time and I can't ever remember coming out two weeks before the draft and saying this is the guy we're taking."
This might be true. I have not spent the same amount of time as Fisher in NFL draft rooms leading up to the big day (or really, any time at all -- they don't let you in there), but I have seen and heard of more than a few draft boards being fully constructed at this point. Fisher and Snead could also be playing the long game here, and wondering if there isn't one or two more moves they can make with interest spiking in both quarterbacks that might go No. 1 in the draft.
They could also just be joking around with us. There really is no good reason to tell reporters that their work is done.
For many of us, it's nearly impossible to believe that the Rams do not know how they are taking. Imagine the fictional scenario where Snead and Fisher tell Rams owner Stan Kroenke that they have just dealt a slew of picks -- and in the owner's eyes, controllable contracts that will lay the foundation of his roster for the next five seasons -- for the first overall pick in a new city. And when asked who they are picking, they answer, We've got a few ideas!
Consensus says the Rams are taking a quarterback, even if Snead told NFL Media's Steve Wyche on Thursday that they still love the way Case Keenum played down the stretch. He also told reporters that the answer was not to "delete" Sam Bradford off the roster, too.
We just have to wait two weeks to figure out which one they are taking.
"We got to finish cleaning up the board -- after this week we're going to fine tune it from there," Snead said. "To make a deal like this you got a good idea of what's going to be in and around number one. So I'd say the research on that pick is probably, I don't know what percentage but it's definitely in the '90s to mid '90s. We'll spend five percent trying to figure out that pick but I think we got a lot of the hay in the barn on that one."