The St. Louis Rams walked away from the 2015 NFL Draft with four offensive linemen in the first six rounds - a pretty good haul for a team that has suffered horribly in recent seasons from poor play up front and has a new franchise quarterback it wants to protect in Nick Foles.
Interestingly though, it seems the Rams may have almost come away with a full five-person starting unit in the draft and the fifth one would've been a doozy.
In a recent profile of former LSU Tigers offensive linemen La'el Collins from Robert Klemko Of MMQB.com detailing how he became a Dallas Cowboy after falling out of the draft thanks to an incident involving the shooting death of an ex-girlfriend, Collins' representatives Deryk Gilmore, Rick Smith and Mike McCartney revealed this exchange as the selections ticked away in the final round of the draft...
"When we got to the last 10 picks I don't think I've ever been so anxious in a draft," McCartney says. "We were praying he didn't get picked."
Before making its seventh-round selection, one team sends Smith one last text message.
"There was a team that had drafted four offensive linemen," Smith says, "and they said, 'We're taking him.' And I texted back, 'You're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to waste this pick.'
"And they passed. And now he's a UDFA."
Though he doesn't indicate the Rams by name, St. Louis was the only team in the draft to come away with four offensive linemen (H/T to @JimmyKempski of The Philly Voice).
It would certainly have made sense from a football perspective for Rams head coach Jeff Fisher and GM Les Snead to take a flier on a first-round talent who fell for suspect reasons - see what I did there? - at a position of need.
Because of Collins' unfortunate situation though, the NFL ruled that if he went undrafted, he would be forced to sign with a team this offseason and could not enter the 2016 NFL Draft.
If he were drafted, he would have had the option to forfeit his selection and enter next season's draft.
In a way, the Rams likely dodged a bullet because as a seventh-round pick slated to make peanuts Collins almost assuredly would have opted out and decided to re-enter next season, at which point he would have again been discussed as a likely top-32 pick.
Still, it's incredibly intriguing to consider Collins lining up along the Rams offensive line along with Greg Robinson, Roger Saffold and draft picks Jamon Brown, Cody Wichmann, Andrew Donnal and Rob Havenstein.
