Les Snead gives awesome insight into Rams' draft process and prospect meetings

“Historically, we do not do top-30s here at the Rams,” he said. “The main reason is this. A lot of times, when those meetings become public, a team behind you, let’s say they’re interested in that player somewhere along that way in the draft, you never know who’s lurking from behind. Let’s say you’re picking 55, 65, and all of a sudden, someone moves to 64 because they think you might pick that player, at that point, there’s nothing you can do. You can just sit, wait, see what they do, and if they pick the player you want. So there’s a little strategy there.”

“Our last top-30: 2023, Kobie Turner. The reason we did Kobie is he wasn’t invited to Indy. Indy’s where a lot of the medicals and physicals occur. A lot of times, if you’re planning on drafting a player, you’d like to bring him to your city, let him go through a physical with your medical team. So 2023 is our last top-30.”

Instead of bringing prospects to their facility in Woodland Hills, the Rams prefer to go meet players on campus. Snead says they usually don’t work out players in those settings, having seen plenty of practice and game film, but they do like to talk football with them, whether it’s about scheme, fit or their past experience.

This year, Snead says the Rams did 66 private visits after doing 61 last year. So their scouts and other talent evaluators met with a lot of players before the draft. It just wasn’t always Snead and McVay taking those visits.

“What we like to do is go meet the player on their campus,” Snead said. “In this draft cycle, we did 66 private meetings with players. In 2025 draft cycle, we did 61 private meetings with players. That’s not Sean and I all the time. We’re not going to go see 66 (players). So it’s different people in our building going to connect with these players. We usually don’t work them out. They played football, we’ve seen them practice, we’ve seen them play games. … We usually like to meet the kid. Also, do this: You know how important it is with installations, whether you play offense or defense, install some of our scheme, allow those players to spit it back to us, see how they’re processing football, see how they’re relating what they’ve done in the past to ours, how fast it might take them to get up to speed and help the Rams. And we’ll also talk ball with them about what they may do.”

For anyone wondering how the Rams handle the pre-draft process and prospect meetings, Snead’s breakdown is great. It perfectly explains why the Rams are one of the only teams that never have reported top-30 visits and reveals how many prospects they do meet with leading up to the draft.

It’s not that they don’t put in the work. They certainly do. It’s just that they handle all of the pre-draft madness in a different way.

This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Rams' Les Snead breaks down prospect meetings, visits and NFL combine