Rams land the perfect player in dream trade scenario to fix woeful secondary in all-in season
Will Les Snead pull the trigger once more?
The Los Angeles Rams are preparing for a major offseason ahead of them. With their Super Bowl window potentially closing soon with Matthew Stafford’s impending retirement, the Rams cannot afford to be lax in tightening up the roster and adding as much talent as they can, wherever they can.
Their biggest priority has to be addressing the secondary, a unit that let the team down time and time again this season and ended up costing them a chance at a Super Bowl. In his latest trade predictions piece, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell gives them the dream option to fix their most glaring need.
Rams pull off another blockbuster trade
In Barnwell’s scenario, the Rams give up their second first-round pick, 29th overall, and send it to the Kansas City Chiefs in exchange for cornerback Trent McDuffie.
“The Rams have two first-round picks after trading down in last year’s draft, and having come bitterly close to making it back to the Super Bowl this past season, GM Les Snead has to be thinking about what he can do to get his organization over the top. Loading up to try to build a title-winner while Stafford is still slinging makes sense. Their biggest weakness is at cornerback, a position Snead has tried to address via trades for young stars in the past….McDuffie fits that bill as a feisty, aggressive cornerback with the ability to play near the line of scrimmage. The Rams have spent at one of the league’s lowest rates over the past two years on defense, and they would have no trouble absorbing a potential extension for McDuffie, let alone his $13.6 million fifth-year option in 2026.”
McDuffie would be a tremendous addition. He’s highly intelligent and he’s a natural fit in the Rams’ defense. McDuffie boasts the ability to travel inside and outside and shadow top receivers, much like what the Rams had with Jalen Ramsey in the past. McDuffie’s elite change-of-direction and agility combined with his intelligence, aggressiveness, and physicality make him a do-it-all cornerback who can be the Rams’ top coverage option. There’s just…one problem with this scenario.
Is Trent McDuffie worth a first-round pick?
I know it seems unorthodox to glow about McDuffie only to turn around and question his value, but hear me out here. Since 2000, only three cornerbacks have been traded for first-round picks: Darrelle Revis, Jalen Ramsey, and Sauce Gardner. As talented as McDuffie is, he’s not the same caliber of player that those three are.
However, the 2026 NFL Draft class is…less than inspiring, to say the least. There’s an extremely high chance McDuffie is flat-out better than anyone the Rams would be able to draft at 29 (there’s a high chance he’d be better than anyone at 13 as well), but when you add in the difference in contract value between what McDuffie’s extension will be versus a pick at the end of the first round…that math doesn’t go in McDuffie’s favor.
The Rams have a ton of Day 3 capital instead that they might be able to offer the Chiefs to entice them with their second-round pick instead, similar to what occurred in a trade for Marcus Peters both of these teams enacted in 2018.
If the chance to add McDuffie comes up, the Rams shouldn’t hesitate to pursue him. However, the math on the acquisition is always going to be more complicated than a simple yes/no on the trade.
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