The Rams’ Week 1 opener offered a blunt snapshot of where this roster stands with its younger talent: not much happened, and that’s the problem.
Los Angeles sat every drafted rookie in the season opener, and the second-year group didn’t do much to brighten the picture. Outside linebacker Josaiah Stewart was the lone sophomore to make a real mark, finishing with six tackles. After that, the production thinned out fast.
Tight end Terrance Ferguson didn’t come down with the only pass thrown his way. Wide receiver Konata Mumpfield also came up empty on his lone target.
Defensive lineman Ty Hamilton managed just one tackle. And two of the team’s six 2025 draft picks, linebacker Chris Paul Jr. and running back Jarquez Hunter, are already gone.
That lack of early help from young players is more than a short-term inconvenience. The Rams have spent recent seasons pushing chips forward, building around a roster that was meant to win now in 2026. That approach has left them thin on future resources, even with more than two dozen contracts set to expire this season.
The draft cupboard doesn’t look much better from here. The Rams currently own the league’s least valuable collection of 2027 picks, which makes the idea of a quick reset even harder to see.
That’s the unsettling part of this story: the Rams have not just stumbled in one game. The last two drafts have simply not produced enough.
By contrast, the 2023 class delivered six starters and three key backups, while the 2024 group added six more important rotational pieces. Those drafts helped power the Rams into the playoffs in 2023 and then into another stretch of success as those players gained experience.
But the recent classes haven’t matched that standard. The Rams still haven’t found a starter from either of the past two drafts.
That matters because the 2023 class is now nearing the end of its rookie contracts, and Los Angeles won’t be able to keep everyone. With limited money to work with, some of those players are likely to walk.
One game won’t decide the season, and offseason blockbuster moves still have their appeal when football is the only thing anyone wants to talk about. But the warning signs are piling up. The Rams were stunned by a 5-12 season a year after winning the Super Bowl, and another steep drop can’t be dismissed as impossible.
The team has already lived through one ugly start before. In 2022, the Rams opened with a humiliating loss to the Buffalo Bills. They reached the Week 7 bye at 3-3, then dropped their next six games as injuries forced them deeper and deeper into the roster.
That’s why Week 1 mattered beyond the scoreboard. Los Angeles chose to scratch all of its rookies, and the message was plain. If those players aren’t getting chances now, the team may not be able to lean on them later when the season starts demanding more from the bottom of the roster.
Trust starts now. The payoff comes later. Right now, the Rams have plenty of reasons to be uneasy.
In Other News...
Rams Suddenly Face A Defensive Problem They Couldn't Afford
A weekend of coaching debuts around the league underscored how quickly a first impression can swing a season, and the Rams had to watch it unfold while dealing with a loss of their own. Joe Brady stepped in and got a win for Buffalo, Jesse Minter did the same in Baltimore, Josh Allen piled up four touchdowns, and the Ravens backed their new voice with a strong defensive showing. For Los Angeles, the bigger concern was not what happened elsewhere, but how its own game unraveled and what it means when the margins get tighter.
The Rams are now trying to sort through a defensive issue they could not really afford, especially with upcoming games already demanding more stability. The concern grew sharper with Myles Garretts injury hanging over the picture, because any change to the defensive plan can ripple quickly when the schedule does not give you much room to breathe. Los Angeles has to respond fast, and the next step will tell a lot about whether this is a temporary setback or something more disruptive. [Read more 🡒]
Rams Suddenly Face A Brutal Wait For Myles Garrett
The Rams have already had to adjust their plans around Myles Garrett in training camp, where lower-leg pain limited his participation before the situation pushed him toward arthroscopic knee surgery and injured reserve. For a team trying to get its footing early, losing a player of Garretts caliber for at least four games is a real setback, especially with the regular season opening stretch offering little time to ease into the absence.
Garrett cannot return until Week 6 at the earliest, when the Rams host the Arizona Cardinals, which leaves the team waiting longer than it would like for clarity on his recovery. In the meantime, Los Angeles has to sort through how to hold up without one of its most disruptive defenders while the calendar keeps moving toward a matchup that suddenly feels a lot more important. [Read more 🡒]
Rams Nearly Took A Very Different Path To Fix Their Pass Rush
The Rams spent part of their pass-rush search on a far more familiar kind of star power than the one they eventually landed, with Los Angeles initially exploring a trade for Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby before the rest of the market shifted around them. A proposed Raiders-Ravens deal had already fallen apart over concerns about Crosbys surgically repaired knee, but the pass rusher later indicated he wanted to stay in Las Vegas and the Raiders were not inclined to move him for anything less than full value.
From the Rams standpoint, the bigger takeaway is how close they came to taking a very different route to solve the same problem. Crosby has reportedly had no trouble with the knee since and is said to be in excellent health, which only sharpens the what-if for Los Angeles before it ultimately pivoted and landed Myles Garrett instead. [Read more 🡒]