American Football

These are the 10 ‘most valuable’ players ever drafted by the Rams

June 30, 2024

New Orleans Saints v Los Angeles Rams — Photo by Ric Tapia/Getty Images

Aaron Donald stands the test of time as the best player drafted by the Rams

There is no one good way to assess any football player’s true value, whether that be over the course of a game, a season, or an entire career, and there never will be. There never will be. Value under these circumstances is an abstract concept with no clear answers on how to measure one player against another.

Is Aaron Donald more valuable than Van Jefferson? Objectively speaking, yes. That’s not in dispute.

But is Tutu Atwell more valuable than A.J. Jackson? Is Puka Nacua more valuable next season than Cooper Kupp? Did Janoris Jenkins have a more valuable career than James Laurinaitis?

You’re all allowed to have an opinion and believe that your opinion is objective. But when I ask for more information and say, “Okay, but tell me in POINTS how valuable each player is?” What could you say that wasn’t two random arbitrary numbers that we pulled out of thin air. I know what a yard is. I don’t know exactly how much more valuable Aaron Donald was than Deacon Jones, or how much more valuable Deacon Jones was than Aaron Donald, or if they are even.

Pro-Football-Reference, the go-to site for any NFL writer who references history from time to time, does make such a number anyway. It’s not like I’m telling you that this number is the go-to digit for value—there’s no such thing!—but I will share with you what PFR says about Adjusted Value and who the 10 most valuable players ever drafted by the Rams are according to AV.

And no, not even PFR would tell you that AV is the catch-all empirical number for player value. Pro-Football-Reference starts their AV explainer by saying “AV is not meant to be a be-all, end-all metric. Football stat lines just do not come close to capturing all the contributions of a player the way they do in baseball and basketball.”

So feel free to be as skeptical of the results as the creator of it is.

Nine-time Pro Bowl Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin only has 17 AV because of the era he played in and those numbers don’t compute with the Super Bowl era. It’s just a thing—no different than how passer rating of EPA or DVOA are made-up numbers based on stats like yards and touchdowns and fumbles and sacks—and today I’m using AV because it’s a jumping off point to use.

Again, it is NO DIFFERENT than preciously-held made-up analytical numbers like EPA, which are just based at their core in yards gained, yards lost, scores, turnovers, etc.

The top-10 AV for players ever DRAFTED BY the Rams:

1. Aaron Donald, 2014-2023 (124 wAV)

The “w” stands for weighted AV, which attempts to weight the score according to the era. Obviously this doesn’t work with Van Brocklin for some reason.

No such issues for Donald, the top-ranked player in Rams draft history by far. By very far.

2. Merlin Olsen, 1962-1976 (116 wAV)

The all-time Rams defensive line would be the best in the NFL? Olsen made 14 Pro Bowls in 15 seasons. He even received two career votes for MVP, one in 1970 and one in 1972.

3. Jack Youngblood, 1971-1984 (112 wAV)

Youngblood unofficially led the NFL in sacks in 1974 and 1979, and he as a five-time first-team All-Pro.

4. Orlando Pace, 1997-2009 (104 wAV)

AV is calculated for offensive linemen based on games, starts, positional value, and All-Pro awards. Pace played in 169 games and made three first-team All-Pro lists at a time when he was in competition with tackles like Jonathan Ogden and Walter Jones.

5. Deacon Jones, 1961-1974 (103 wAV)

The 1971 Rams defensive line featured Olsen, Youngblood, and Jones. The linebacker is coming up next. I couldn’t sum Jones up better than Wikipedia:

Jones was considered by many to revolutionize the position of defensive end. He was credited with coining the phrase “sacking the quarterback”. He once stated that a quarterback being sacked devastated the offense in the same way that a city was devastated when it was sacked.In 1999, Jones provided a Los Angeles Times reporter with some other detailed imagery about his forte: “You take all the offensive linemen and put them in a burlap bag, and then you take a baseball bat and beat on the bag. You’re sacking them, you’re bagging them. And that’s what you’re doing with a quarterback.”

6. Isiah Robertson, 1971-1982 (103 wAV)

The Rams drafted Robertson and Youngblood in the first round of the 1971 draft. One is a Hall of Famer, the other is a six-time Pro Bowl, two-time All-Pro who I imagine could be the most overlooked member of the 70s team. The Rams were never quite lucky enough to get all these great defensive players together in their primes, Deacon Jones was traded in 1972.

7. Isaac Bruce, 1994-2009 (101 wAV)

His 119 catch, 1,791 yard season in 1995, only his second in the NFL, was way ahead of its time. Remarkably, Bruce finished fourth in catches and second in yards in a stacked year for receivers. He is fifth all-time in yards.

8. Torry Holt, 1999-2009 (99 wAV)

For a player who has had a much harder time getting into the Hall of Fame than Bruce, Torry Holt almost caught him in AV. He is 17th all-time in receiving yards and twice led the NFL in yards, something Bruce only did once. I understand that it is more difficult to make the Hall of Fame as a receiver than almost any position because it is so competitive, but I can’t figure out what Holt did wrong to miss the cut for his first 10 nominations.