In 2013, the Rams traded up to draft Tavon Austin with the 8th pick and Alec Ogletree at the end of the first round; the franchise also used third round picks on T.J. McDonald and Stedman Bailey.  None of those players, or any other player drafted in 2013 by the Rams, is still on the team. In free agency, St. Louis signed Jake Long from Miami and Jared Cook from Tennessee, and neither of those players — or anyone else signed by the Rams that year — are still on the team.

The 2014 Draft didn’t get off to a better start — St. Louis drafted Greg Robinson with the 2nd overall pick, one of the largest draft busts in recent memory.  But Les Snead — the same GM who traded up for Austin, whiffed on the rest of the 2013 draft, and then drafted Robinson — has been on a very hot streak ever since.  An hour after taking Robinson, the team took Aaron Donald with the 13th pick that year.  Then the Rams drafted Todd Gurley with a 1st round pick in 2015, and traded up for Jared Goff with the 1st pick in 2016.  Those are the team’s best three players, but the bulk of the current roster was acquired in 2017.

Seven starters were added in 2017: wide receiver Robert Woods, offensive linemen Austin Blythe, John Sullivan, and Andrew Whitworth were all veteran acquisitions for the team, while the Rams used 3rd and 4th round picks on LB Samson Ebukam, S John Johnson, and wide receivers Cooper Kupp (8 starts) and Josh Reynolds (8 starts as Kupp’s replacement). It was not the star-studded, Kamara-esque class the Saints had that year, but seven starters is still seven starters.

The graph below shows the amount of AV on the 2018 Rams that was added each year, both via the draft and overall:

This past offseason, Los Angeles was short on draft picks, so the team went to the veteran market to make some high-profile acquisitions. In other words, the Rams tried build a dream team.  Los Angeles traded for Brandin Cooks (13 points of AV in 2017), and added three players who had uneven 2017s after strong 2016 campaigns CB Marcus Peters (13 points of AV in 2016), and CB Aqib Talib (14 points of AV in 2016) and DT Ndamukong Suh (12 points of AV in 2016). And during the season, Los Angeles traded for Jaguars pass rusher Dante Fowler. How did those 5 players work out?

Cooks has been great, living up to expectations with 1,204 receiving yards. Suh has been very good, too: he ranks 2nd to Donald on the team in both sacks and quarterback hits. Peters and Talib have been less good, in part because Talib missed 8 games with a broken ankle. Peters was repeatedly torched early in the year, although he’s played better in the back half of the season. Fowler had two sacks and a forced fumble in 8 games, although he did have a sack in the Rams playoff win last week.