Every leader of any company finds themselves at a crossroads. In that sense, the Los Angeles Rams team… The Sneads He is no different. What sets him apart is how he decides which path to take, and perhaps there is a lesson in that for all of us.
Opinion columnist
Granderson Landing Station
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and navigating life in America.
In the season opener against the Lions on Sunday night, for the first time in a decade, Los Angeles will not have Aaron Donald on its roster. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year retired after the Rams' playoff loss in Detroit last season. And it's in the Motor City that this new chapter begins.
In 2014, the scouting report on the All-American said Donald was too small, standing at just 6 feet. Snead, in just his second draft as a general manager, ignored those reports and selected Donald at No. 13 anyway. And with 43 seconds left in the 2022 Super Bowl, and with the Rams clinging to a 23-20 lead, it was Snead's 2014 gamble that paid off. He reached out to Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.ending the threat.
Disregarding the scouting report on Donald wasn't even his biggest gamble in that year's draft.
Snead also selected Michael Sam, marking the first time an openly gay man had been selected in the NFL draft. Like Donald, Sam was considered undersized in scouting reports, though he unanimously won the SEC Defensive Player of the Year award. A media frenzy accompanied the historic decision, but ultimately Sam did not make the final roster. Snead had established himself as a bit of a maverick, though, with mixed results, we now know.
Because of Donald's dominance and the history surrounding Sam, we tend to forget that 10 years ago this maverick also had the No. 2 pick, and used it in one of the biggest busts in league history.
“We drafted Greg Robinson first, so the system we were using definitely needed tweaking,” Snead told me this week. “That year, it was fun because we had those two picks.” Though there were several future Hall of Famers around Robinson in the 2014 draft, Snead didn’t keep any of them. Instead, he used the second pick to select a player who ended up out of the league in less than five years.
That bad decision was offset by Donald's success. After Robinson, no one could have faulted Snead if he had decided to be more cautious at the next crossroads. He wasn't.
There's something to be said for the same leader who drafted the NFL's first gay player and is also the same general manager who hired the league's youngest coach since the 1930s. And don't forget: Before coming to the Rams, quarterback Matthew Stafford had been in the league for 10 years and had never won a playoff game. This nonconformist sent three picks and Jared Goff, a quarterback who had won playoff games, to Detroit in exchange for Stafford.
While it's true that all general managers make mistakes, not many GMs would bet big after Robinson and Sam. That's why I wanted to talk to Snead. The experience of that 2014 crossroads has to apply to other parts of life, right?
“One of the lessons you learn is the ‘top 10 curse,’” he told me of his decision-making process. “A lot of times when you’re picking in the top 10, you’re trying to find a phenom rather than a football player, right? Aaron Donald was outside the top 10… because he had some less phenom things, right? Maybe size and height. So I always say, ‘Beware of the top 10 curse because sometimes you’re looking for a phenom athlete or a unique athlete and not necessarily a really good football player. ’”
“That doesn’t mean that physical gifts aren’t important,” he said, just that “you better have those things inside so that every day you can make the decision to try to be excellent and not just good or not just above average.”
Another piece of advice from Snead: Managing your emotions is key to growth because “it’s very easy to feel a lesson.”
“With that, hey, if you pick Greg Robinson, it doesn’t work,” he said. “You get punished for it, not just internally, but even from a reputation standpoint, right? Whatever you want to call it. You can feel it. That’s the easiest part of the lesson. Now: Can you learn a lesson from this? The hardest part will be applying it.”
After failing to draft Robinson in the top 10 in 2014, Snead took a chance the following season on Todd Gurley, who was the 10th pick, even though the running back had finished his college career with a torn ACL. Gurley rewarded him by winning Rookie of the Year.
“We’re betting on human beings,” Snead said of his hiring process. “It’s better to have a false negative than a false positive. A false negative is saying, ‘We don’t think that player can help the Rams.’ Maybe that player then helps somebody else. We can probably get through that situation. But if you have a false positive and you think, ‘That player is going to help the Rams,’ but he’s not … now you’re putting your faith in somebody that you thought was going to be a net benefit to you, but unfortunately he’s not.”
Which brings us to Sunday's opener in Detroit.
Not only is it the site of Donald's final game, but it's also where Goff, the player Snead traded for Stafford, got his revenge. Stafford led the Rams to the Super Bowl, but since then, Goff's Lions have been the team on the rise.
It was a tough time for the Rams, but we all have those moments. Snead says the losses provide a “useful baseline of who we are”: “These are our strengths. These are our weaknesses. We have an opponent next week. How quickly can we apply those lessons, to move forward and continue to play good football and maybe get a chance to play an opponent again in the tournament when it matters? There are no moral victories, just lessons.”
