Stupid pick. Truly stupid. With all the holes they have on this team, and all the starters they still need to add?

They go for a backup QB, under six feet?

they need a backup qb.  i just question whether he would have been available later.

Brugler gives him a 6th round grade, and he’ll turn 26 this year.

So, I guess the Rams are just fine being awful in the secondary. One starting-caliber corner, in Durant; a starting-caliber safety in Fuller; and then, basically, a bunch of JAGs.

Still no #2 for Kupp, and Akers is still a question mark. Which Akers will show up? etc. etc.

I don’t think the Rams’ Draft room knows what it’s doing, and with their recent track record of cutting a lot of their picks, that’s borne out in the real world.

InvaderRam wrote:

they need a backup qb. i just question whether he would have been available later.

He would have. And most scouts would argue he wasn’t the best available QB.

They had much bigger needs to fill at that spot, and several talented players sitting there who won’t be there when the Rams draft again at #161.

zn wrote:

zn wrote:

Bennett has backup potential for a timing-based passing attack that includes concepts often seen in the Shanahan offense.

There’s your answer.

The thing is when you take him. His potential “fit” is beside the point. Take him in the 4th and you lose out on players at positions of immediate need. As in, potential starters.

Wait for known backups. Those guys will still be there after the potential starters are long gone.

<header>

Stetson Bennett   QB   Georgia

by Drew Boylhart • 2022-12-16

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by canadaram.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by canadaram.

InvaderRam wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

The thing is when you take him. His potential “fit” is beside the point. Take him in the 4th and you lose out on players at positions of immediate need. As in, potential starters. Wait for known backups. Those guys will still be there after the potential starters are long gone.

i agree.

And just a side-note on critiquing these picks. Looking at comments on another board made me think about this again . . .

I fully realize that the Rams . . .

A: Have their own players’ board
B: Have inside knowledge we’ll never know
C: Understand their own schemes and fits and needs better than we fans.

I get all of that. However, they’re human, and they make mistakes, and their track record in recent years isn’t exactly all that great, having cut a ton of their own draft picks, etc. etc. How many picks have even made it through their rookie contracts in recent years? Not many. And they tend not to re-sign most of the rest.

(Plus, schemes change. Coaches leave. Nothing is forever in the NFL)

In short, I think criticism is warranted at times, and no team’s FO is above it. IMO, the Rams’ FO all too often plays poor chess on Draft Day, and we see the results. In relative terms, not that many guys left from the Super Bowl team, which still kinda stuns me when I think about it . . .

Some more of my favorites now off the board:

Darius Rush, Cam Mitchell, Abanikanda, Abdullah. The first two are likely upgrades at corner; Abanikanda likely upgrade the running back position; Abdullah likely upgrades the linebacker/edge position.

Oh, well.

Billy_T wrote:

ZN,

They don’t know other teams’s boards and they have no idea if he would be there at the bottom of the 5th.

I’d argue that focusing on just one player makes the drafter a “purist.” Being open to a wide range of players, positions, needs, and “scheme-versatility,” guards against that. Zeroing in on just one guy can’t help but blind the drafter to the dozens of quite possibly better players, who may offer the potential for immediate upgrades. Do you think the Rams see Stetson as a potential upgrade to Stafford? I’m betting no. Whenever possible, with each pick, that should be first and foremost on the minds of the FO. Does this player offer a good chance at an upgrade? Of course, if a team is stacked with a ton of talent, they can move on much sooner to “depth.” But the Rams aren’t one of those teams right now. They have multiple holes at starter. They shouldn’t worry about depth until they upgrade their starters. Triage. The Draft is kinda like a triage unit. Take care of the most immediate needs first, in descending order through each pick, each round.

They had a big need and a perfect opportunity. That’s all I care about.

Rams draft Stetson Bennett: LA gets its backup QB — ‘He was off the charts’

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/4470276/2023/04/29/stetson-bennett-draft-los-angeles-rams/?source=emp_shared_article

In all of the chaos of their 2022 season, the Rams made one thing clear: They were going to update their backup quarterback position.

Saturday at pick No. 128, they drafted Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, a two-time national champion, by all accounts a fierce (though polarizing on and off the field among evaluators) competitor and the clear new No. 2 in Los Angeles.

There’s a difference, the Rams found last year when they rolled through four quarterbacks and finally stuck with waiver-wire acquisition Baker Mayfield, another competitor who also has drawn mixed opinions throughout his career, between worst-case scenarios. There is the situation in which the starter goes down and there is little chance the backup can come in and give the team a chance to win, and there is the situation in which the starter goes down and the team knows it has a shot to win. Mayfield showed them that, in flashes.

Director of draft management (and longtime Les Snead right-hand man) J.W. Jordan, a leader in Stetson’s evaluation, said that even with all the talent around Bennett on Georgia’s formidable rosters, he isn’t just a quarterback who stands and hands off the ball.

“That’s what you think going in,” Jordan said. “So in a way, it’s like you’ve got to overcome that bias. But when you start watching him, you’re like, ‘Oh. This guy is more than just a cog in the wheel. He’s driving the bus — for better or worse, however good or bad he is, he’s driving the bus.”

The Rams also brought in Kellen Clemens in January to consult throughout their quarterback evaluation process. Clemens, a former NFL quarterback (including in St. Louis from 2011 to 2013), traveled to Athens, Ga., to see Bennett and ran him through protection calls, plays and problem-solving exercises.

“That’s what you have to do a lot of times as a quarterback,” Clemens said. “You’ve got a plan, but the defense can do a variety of things to you, and at some point problems come up. You have to be able to solve them. Over the course of our visit, being able to sit down and watch tape, get him on the (white)board, it was an opportunity to say, ‘Well, here’s the problem. How would you solve it?’ … He was off the charts.”

Bennett, who is 25, was arrested in January on a misdemeanor public intoxication charge. Draft analysts and NFL staffers alike speculated the incident would drop his selection point deep into the draft, if he was picked at all. Bennett accounted for the situation publicly while at the NFL combine this spring and spoke with general managers and coaches across the league about it, including the Rams (though most of their dialogue centered around football).

“I can tell you, the way that he handled it, there was an accountability there,” Clemens said. “There was also a very mature response to how he handled it.”

Big board ranking

Bennett ranked No. 234 on Brugler’s top 300 prospect list and was his No. 11-ranked QB prospect. Of Bennett, he wrote: “Overall, Bennett is a smallish passer who doesn’t have the physical traits that most NFL teams seek at the position, but he is a sound decision-maker with the competitive temperament and make-it attitude that translate to his on-field play. He is ideally suited for a move-based NFL offense in which he can be a No. 2/No. 3.”

How he fits

Bennett is the automatic No. 2 on the Rams’ roster, and that’s not just because they entered the fourth round with only one quarterback — starter Matthew Stafford — on the roster. The Rams did a lot of evaluations on lower-tier/Day 3 quarterbacks specifically for this purpose.

“He’s accurate, tough as nails, highly, highly competitive. He can anticipate throws,” Jordan said. “Throws guys open, that sort of thing. One of the unique things I thought he had to him is a lot of (quarterbacks are) either good at staying in the pocket, climbing the pocket, stepping up, taking the hits, or they’re good at escaping, getting out of the pocket, making something happen off-schedule. Not a lot of guys are really good at both, and he’s one of the guys that I think is good at both.”

Rookie impact

Bennett’s job is interesting once he arrives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., this spring. Unless Stafford is hurt, Bennett won’t see playing time outside of the preseason (head coach Sean McVay doesn’t play starters in the preseason and has usually been slow at pulling starters of those contests even in lopsided games).

But one important role for Bennett, as he also develops as a player in McVay’s system, will be to run a live scout team against a defense that will feature a ton of young players and needs to get good, fast. That is part of why Bennett’s competitive, “make it happen by any means necessary” play style was a popular fit among staffers. Even many of the defensive coaches were thrilled with the selection and ripped some cheers through the Rams’ draft house Saturday when Bennett was officially announced.

Early expectations

In a perfect scenario, we’ll see the most of Bennett in the preseason.

Fast evaluation

It always seemed a given that the Rams would look hard at quarterbacks in rounds 4 and 5. Bennett’s off-the-field situation drew concern from some analysts and teams, but it’s clear by the staff’s reaction to picking him and their subsequent comments that it wasn’t internally seen as a deal-breaker. They need a player who can get their defense competitive reps and develop his craft at the same time, and they can’t take up three roster spots in September with quarterbacks anymore. Bennett might have been drafted too high in the opinions of some analysts, but the Rams seem to think they got him right where they wanted him.

While Rams G.M. Les Snead was studying Georgia offensive linemen, QB Stetson Bennett stood out

[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com]

Everyone expected the Rams to take a quarterback in the draft, since they only had one on the roster. Few expected them to draft Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett — especially not where they did, in round four.

On Saturday, the Rams powers-that-be explained that they spotted Bennett early in the scouting process. He specifically caught G.M. Les Snead’s attention while Snead was studying Georgia’s blockers.

“Georgia has got a good offensive line so anytime you’d go to watch defenders in the SEC you’d go, ‘Oh, let’s watch Georgia. They’re the best team. They’ve got a good offensive line and it was interesting,’” Snead told reporters. “You just come away going, ‘Wow, I thought people said [Bennett] was just maybe, whatever kind of manage-the-game-type QB.’ But what you did is you just go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. Look at that guy move. Look at him buy some time. Look at him anticipate some throws.’ And just you come away thinking, ‘Wow, he was a weapon for Georgia.’ And I made a joke internally that he’s got a bad P.R. agent because his image is not maybe being, let’s call it a talented player, was probably a little false.”

Coach Sean McVay agreed.

“Because of the background and the way that he became the starter at Georgia is a little bit unconventional and it wasn’t the five-star route, but I think it minimized the athleticism, the ability to create off-schedule,” McVay told reporters. “He’s a natural thrower of the football. He can play with great anticipation, throws the ball with accuracy, plays within the timing. I think [former Georgia offensive coordinator Todd] Monken, who’s now with the Ravens, they did a great job where it’s an easier eval because you can see a lot of the concepts that maybe you would ask him to execute.

“And he’s around great players, but he elevated those guys. He sees the field well. You can seize processing things quickly and he’s a lot better athlete than people give him credit for. And I think there’s an edge to him that’s a positive. You want some competitors that have some stuff to him that things don’t always go well, they’re unfazed and they can kind of move on and be able to reset themselves. “And credit to Les and really [quarterbacks coach] Zac Robinson and [offensive coordinator] Mike LaFleur and really his scouting staff where they had identified Stetson early in the process and we wanted to have an all-Athens UGA quarterback room and that’s what we’ve got right now.”

McVay said the Rams are “excited” about having a young quarterback the Rams can now mold as a backup, and possibly as a future starter.

“What a great opportunity for him to come in and learn from a perennial All-Pro, a great football player who’s been doing it at a high level,” McVay said, referring to Matthew Stafford. “And it’s not exclusive to just the great things you see Matthew do on Sundays, but the level of preparation and professionalism that exists throughout the course of the week. His rhythm and routine, the way that he just seamlessly, naturally interacts with guys. I think there’ll be a lot of good things that Stetson will be able to see what it looks like. . . . [We’re excited about being able to work with him and then we’ll figure out how we add because you still want to be able to have more than two. And whether that’s through [underdrafted free agency] or however that ends up working out, but Stetson’s a good football player and we’re excited to get to work with him.”

Stafford is 35. And he’s had plenty of wear and tear. It’s unclear how much longer he’ll go. Maybe, when it’s time for Stafford to step aside, Stetson will be ready to step in.

from https://theramswire.usatoday.com/2023/04/29/rams-matthew-stafford-stetson-bennett-video-analysis/

Stafford was an honorary captain for the Bulldogs for their national championship win over TCU back in January and before kickoff, Stafford was asked about his take on Bennett. He had nothing but good things to say about him, highlighting his leadership skills for the best team in the country.

“His ability to lead this team is pretty special. It kind of happens different sometimes on certain nights for him, whether he’s using his legs or throwing the ball around, but he’s done a great job of leading them,” Stafford said on College GameDay.

"His ability to lead this team is pretty special."

Matthew Stafford has high praise for Stetson Bennett 🙌 pic.twitter.com/eJmUur5G8U

— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) January 10, 2023

Georgia titles on their mind, Rams pick Stetson Bennett to follow Matthew Stafford

GARY KLEIN

https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/story/2023-04-29/rams-nfl-draft-stetson-bennett-georgia-matthew-stafford

Stetson Bennett feels comfortable at SoFi Stadium.

In January, the Georgia quarterback led the Bulldogs to a rout of Texas Christian and won a second consecutive national title.

Now, Bennett is coming back to Los Angeles.

On Saturday, the Rams selected Bennett in the fourth round of the NFL draft, filling a desperate need for a backup quarterback and kicking off a day during which general manager Les Snead and coach Sean McVay selected 11 players.

Coupled with the three players selected Saturday, it was the largest draft class of Snead’s 12-year tenure.

Bennett, 25, became the first quarterback chosen during the McVay era and only the fourth quarterback chosen by Snead since he became general manager in 2012.

Bennett became the first quarterback selected by the Rams since 2016, when they traded up a record 14 spots in the first round to select Jared Goff with the No. 1 pick.

“Excited to work with Coach McVay,” Bennett said, adding, “I hear he’s a genius.”

Starting quarterback Matthew Stafford, acquired before the 2021 season in a trade for Goff, two first-round picks and a third-round pick, led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory in his first season but was sidelined for eight games last season because of injuries.

Bennett, a Georgia native, grew up watching Stafford star for Georgia before Stafford was selected with the first pick in the 2009 draft. Now he will back up Stafford, ostensibly providing the Rams with a player capable of leading the team if Stafford is sidelined, and succeeding him if Stafford retires in the next few years.

“He’s one of the most talented quarterbacks to ever play the game,” Bennett said of Stafford, a 14-year veteran. “And he’s tough as nails, and all of his teammates seem to always like him.

“And so I’m excited to just go in there, be quiet, take notes and learn.”

Bennett began his college career at Georgia as a walk-on but transferred to a junior college. He returned to Georgia, eventually displaced USC transfer J.T. Daniels as the starter and won two national titles.

In 2021, Bennett passed for 29 touchdowns, with seven interceptions. Last season, he passed for 27 touchdowns, with seven interceptions.

Snead said Bennett was beyond a “manage-the-game-type QB” for Georgia.

“You just noticed, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, look at that guy move, look at him buy some time, look at him anticipate some throws,’ ” Snead said. “And just you come away thinking, ‘Wow, he was a weapon.’ ”

McVay noted Bennett’s ability to elevate teammates’ play and turn broken plays into productive ones.

“He’s a lot better athlete than people give him credit for,” McVay said, “And I think there’s an edge to him that’s a positive.

“You want some competitors that have some stuff to ‘em, that things don’t always go well, they’re unfazed and they can kind of move on and reset themselves.”

Bennett was arrested in January in Dallas on suspicion of public intoxication but Rams scouts said Saturday that he acknowledged the incident, took responsibility and that it did not negatively affect their evaluation.

Bennett was only one of the needs filled on a roster that is being overhauled because of the Rams’ decision to go into financial austerity mode.

A year after winning Super Bowl LVI, the Rams nosedived to a 5-12 record. They then released veterans such as linebacker Bobby Wagner and edge rusher Leonard Floyd and traded star cornerback Jalen Ramsey and receiver Allen Robinson. They also did not re-sign nearly 20 free agents, including quarterbacks Baker Mayfield, John Wolford and Bryce Perkins.

The Rams aim to go into the 2024 season with $55 million to $65 million in salary-cap space.

On Friday, the Rams selected offensive lineman Steve Avila in the second round, and edge rusher Byron Young and defensive lineman Kobie Turner in the third.

The Rams made several trades after selecting Bennett and came away with a draft class that included Appalachian State edge rusher Nick Hampton, Georgia offensive tackle Warren McClendon Jr., Clemson tight end Davis Allen and Brigham Young receiver Puka Nacua in the fifth round, Texas Christian cornerback Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson, Nebraska edge rusher Ochaun Mathis and Mississippi running back Zach Evans in the sixth, and Wingate punter Ethan Evans, Oklahoma safety Jason Taylor II and Toledo defensive lineman Desjuan Johnson in the seventh.

Johnson was the final pick in the 259-player draft, the “Mr. Irrelevant” spot San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was selected with last year.

“We got a lot better in terms of the depth of our football team,” McVay said. “There’s a handful of these guys that are going to come in and have legitimate chances to be starters on opening day.”

Bennett won’t be competing to start, but he is excited about the opportunity to join the Rams.

“I love competing against the best, and it helps when you’ve got the best on your team,” he said. “Obviously, won a Super Bowl in the past few years, you know what you’re doing.

“So I’m excited to learn. And it’s an honor that those coaches and GM thought enough of me to pick me. And now it’s my job to go get better every day.”