Rams' Omar Speights Selected Predicted to Breakout in 2025

The former Oregon State Beaver and LSU Tiger brought a strong defensive foundation to the Rams as an undrafted free agent, growing within the system, and the proved himself to be the exact type of player Chris Shula's defense needed.

Speights can cover, tackle, and blitz, displaying those abilities in the regular season and playoffs.

Thus, Pro Football Focus' Bradley Locker named Speights to his NFL All-Breakout team, citing the glimpses of potential displayed as reasons why people should buy stock in the middle linebacker.

"The emergence of the Rams’ young defense was one of the team’s driving factors to the NFC Divisional, not to mention one of the NFL’s better stories in the later portion of the season," wrote Locker. "Among several notable names, Speights’ is one to monitor in 2025."

"Speights burst onto the scene after being an undrafted free agent, becoming one of six rookie linebackers to exceed 500 snaps. He acclimated quickly to a higher level, posting a 69.4 overall PFF grade with a 77.6 PFF run-defense grade and just a 5.1% missed tackle rate — the third-lowest among any qualified linebacker in 2024."

"LA did add Nate Landman from the Atlanta Falcons and draft Chris Paul Jr. in the third round, but the departure of Christian Rozeboom should allow Speights to keep growing in his second season. The former LSU Tiger projects as the best player up the middle of the Rams’ defense."

Speights is the best player by far, and while Landman and Paul Jr will contribute, Speights will have to be the force on the inside to make teams respect the defense.

How he will be used will be interesting as Chris Shula said something thought provoking at OTAs last week regarding the Rams future without Michael Hoecht.

"Hoecht became one of our best 11 players, we thought, last year. Some of that stuff—creating that—was to get our best 11 on the field. I think as we go through, we’re still obviously very early—just finished OTA number four. So, we’re earlier in the process, not necessarily to that point yet, but we’re going to find and give each guy a chance to be the best 11. If that’s the case and we want to do stuff to centralize their skill sets and get them on the grass."

When I read that, I'm thinking the Rams have a specific role for Speights in mind that custom made for his skills, and they're not trying to retrofit him into the defensive structure as they were forced to last season.