Rams Affected in 2006 NFL Draft Redo

Now that the 2025 NFL Draft is in the books, everyone in the scouting community are looking for new ways to improve player evaluations.

In order to test the success of certain draft formulas and analysis, Pro Football Focus' Max Chadwick, Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema selected the 2006 draft to apply their grades to NFL Draft prospects, using the grades to redraft to see if the grades are a good indicator of NFL talent.

"The NFL draft is a crapshoot," the PFF article read. "While NFL teams do their best to forecast which prospects will translate best to the next level, the reality is that franchises rarely get a pick exactly right."

"But what would a draft look like if teams had the benefit of hindsight? PFF has world-class data for every player on every play in every NFL game, dating back to the 2006 season. Knowing what we know now, here is how the first round of the 2006 NFL Draft could have looked."

Several Rams careers would have been greatly altered. Former Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworthwould have been the first selection off the board over Mario Williams by the Houston Texans. In real life, Whitworth was selected by the Bengals in the second round.

"The Texans struggled mightily to protect the quarterback during their first few years as an NFL franchise." Wrote PFF. "Houston’s first-ever draft pick, quarterback David Carr, was sacked an NFL-record 76 times during his rookie season in 2002."

"The Texans fix that issue by drafting a projected Hall of Fame left tackle here in Whitworth. He earned an elite 93.4 PFF overall grade across his 16-year career, with 90.0-plus grades as both a pass blocker and a run blocker."

The Rams had the 11th pick but they traded it to the Broncos for the 15th and 68th overall picks. The Broncos selected Jay Culter, the Rams selected Tye Hill at 15 and Claude Wroten at 68.

In the exercise, the Rams should have drafted Tamba Hali.

"On draft day, the Broncos traded up here to draft quarterback Jay Cutler. But in this exercise, we are reverting picks that weren’t moved before draft night to their original teams. The Rams lacked an impact pass rusher aside from Leonard Little, so they add future five-time Pro Bowler Tamba Hali here."

"Hali tallied at least a 70.0 PFF pass-rush grade in each of his first eight seasons, peaking at 92.1 in 2010."

Hali was drafted by the Chiefs with the 20th pick, playing for the franchise from 2006-2017, recording 89.5 career sacks and 33 forced fumbles.