Wagoner: are Rams in position to move up for a top quarterback?

Are Rams in position to move up for a top quarterback?

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/27908/are-rams-in-position-to-move-up-for-a-top-quarterback

BOCA RATON, Fla. — With the NFL owners meetings finished and most of the free-agent shelves picked over, we are now officially moving into NFL draft season. In fact, we are just about a month away from the annual selection show.

That also means that pro days and top-30 prospect visits for teams all over the league. While a consensus will continue to form on who the top players are, there’s still a lot of debates over who will go at the top of the draft, especially at quarterback.

Cal’s Jared Goff and North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz have held their pro days in the past two weeks and there’s still at least a media debate on which one is better. ESPN’s Britt McHenry, who covered Wentz’s pro day, took the temperature of coaches, coordinators, scouts and colleague Ron Jaworski to get an idea on how that competition is viewed.

Sitting at No. 15 and with a need at quarterback, the Los Angeles Rams don’t figure to be positioned to draft either player, though Goff slipping isn’t out of the realm of possibility. But the Rams do have the ammunition to make a move up if they fall in love with either player. They own three picks in the top 45.

As for a potential trade up, the cost would undoubtedly be great, prohibitive even. But that hasn’t stopped some of those doing mock drafts from projecting a big move by the Rams.

At Pro Football Focus, Chris Collinsworth recently mocked the Rams moving all the way to the first pick to grab Wentz.

At SI.com, Chris Burke provided what’s probably a more realistic trade with the Rams going up to No. 6 in a deal with Baltimore to land Goff.

In reality, moving from 15 to 1 is probably too steep of a cost for the Rams, especially for a quarterback that doesn’t come with the pedigree of other recent No. 1 overall picks at the position. The move to six would seem more plausible, especially if both Goff and Wentz are on the board at that spot. I tend to think the Rams would prefer Wentz to Goff in that case, however.

Under coach Jeff Fisher and general manager Les Snead, the Rams have not been shy about moving around the draft board. They’ve made bold moves up (the Tavon Austin deal in 2013) and down (the Robert Griffin III trade and again after that), so we can’t rule anything out. Don’t be surprised if the rumor mill picks up over the next month.