Rams Coaches Believe They Have An UDFA STEAL Emerging

Rams Coaches Believe They Have An UDFA STEAL Emerging

All right, let’s talk Los Angeles Rams. And folks, you know, we’ve got some good stuff for you today because I’m calling from an undisclosed location, supposedly on vacation with my family. But this news is so important. This data is so exciting. We’re going to talk about it with you right now. Before we get into that though, I’m Nick. That is my co-host Andrew. And this is Saturday morning inspection. All right, training camp is almost here. Football is almost finally back, folks. But there’s a lot of news still floating around. A lot of guys that we have a lot of anticipation for, certainly on this Los Angeles squad. They’ve done a great job evaluating and drafting rookies over the past couple season. And there’s another guy emerging. I think a lot of Rams fans highlighted this earlier this off season, but we’ve some we’ve done some research ourselves and there’s a lot to like. We’re talking about, of course, linebacker Shawn Dolac from the University of Buffalo. Let’s pull up the f the article here first, then we’ll get into the data on the other side. All right, from the report, the Los Angeles Rams have a long history of turning undrafted players into key contributors, and Shawn Dolac might be next in line. The rookie linebacker out of Buffalo has been turning heads during OTAAS, and he’s already earned high praise from inside linebackers coach Greg Williams, who didn’t hold back when asked about Dolak’s early impact. All right, so this is a little older story right now, but this is Greg Williams, the linebacker’s coach, not to be confused with the longtime defensive coordinator. I made that mistake before myself. Uh Sean could probably take you out there and teach you the defense right now. Williams said he is a quick study man. He really is and that’s one thing you respect from him. I think from the way he plays the game above the neck and the way he had tackled in college. If he does that, Sean’s going to be another guy that will be somebody to reckon with. All right. So Dolac obviously for anyone following the Rams really deeply over the course of OTAAS and rookie mini camps and that entire phase impressed everybody. But this comments from the inside linebackers coach came to light to us only recently and that really made us stop and think, right? We look at the Rams. We look at all of the quality moves they made through the draft and a lot of the young guys they’ve added. Could they have pulled off one of the bigger steals? We talked about Josiah Stewart, defensive lineman from Michigan about a week or so ago and we said, “Listen, this guy’s numbers are off the charts.” Then we took a look at Dolac and oh my goodness, folks, it is bonkers. Let’s pull up our first chart here to highlight what we’re talking about. Again, Shawn Dolac was an undrafted free agent. was not selected in the NFL draft. We compared his analytics, his grades to the top linebackers. We’re talking first and second round picks in the 2025 NFL draft. And folks, his numbers don’t just look good, they completely outclass the top guys. So, if you look on the screen in front of you here, we’ve got Jihad Campbell who was a first round pick. We got Carson Swissinger and Demetrius Knight who are second round picks working left to right. And you have Dolak on the far right. And we broke down every single metric according to PFF. You can see the overall grade in blue, the run defense grade in that reddish color, tackling’s in yellow, pass rush is in green, and coverage is in orange. And you can work left to right, folks, and you can see it for yourselves. Dolan is better than each and every one of these guys in every single category. The one exception is Swissinger has a slightly higher pass rush grade. That’s the only really thing that jumps out to me. You can look at the data for yourselves on the screen. Again, Dolac undrafted. These other three guys first and second round picks. Now, you can make an argument that because Dolac played at Buffalo, okay, level of competition, Campbell and Knight were in the SEC. Schwinger obviously playing for UCLA, completely different competitive environment. That’s fair. But even if you put a 10 to 15% competition related haircut, you lower Dolac’s numbers by 10 15%. He still compares very favorably and is still ahead of a lot of these guys when it comes to the analytics. And folks, that is an incredible amount of value to get in an undrafted free agent. Now, we’re not saying Dolak is perfect. He has some flaws. There’s a lot of reasons he fell completely out of the draft. But when you look at these good quality football players that have numbers off the scale like this, it really jumps out at you. And I really want to highlight one more thing is that Campbell, Swissingers, and Knights, they have good numbers, right? Their data is excellent. It wasn’t like these guys were drafted in the first and second round just because, you know, they were athletic phenoms or something like that and teams selected them for their potential. These were guys analytically in front of you, you can see it. They’re grading out in the 80s and the 90s and the high 70s. They’re crushing it. They did a really good job their final season in the collegiate ranks. Dolak was just absolutely unbelievable from an analytical perspective. He completely outclasses him. Again, even with a haircut, if you compose a 10 15%, you know, decrease on Dolak’s numbers. He still is at the same level, if not better than the other three guys. When you look at his analytics, you talk about a steal, you talk about value, folks, this is what we’re talking about. But let’s not just focus on these three linebackers. Let’s compare Dolak to another potential steel already mentioned on the Los Angeles Rams. We’re talking about of course Chris Paul Jr. or Puall as he’s referred to. We compare those two numbers cuz we know Paul seems to be a a high candidate to be a potential steal for the Rams. Boy, it seems every every draft cycle they get like 20 of these guys. But you can go through the numbers here. Paul is in blue, Dolex in red. And you can see very clearly, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at this data and say, look, from an analytical perspective, overall grade, run defense grade, tackling grade, pass rush grade, and coverage grade, DolAC was better across the board. Not even close. Now, look, you can look at pass rush and say they’re even, but everything else, not even close. Dolac was better. Again, you can look at the competitive environment, right? And that’s fair. It’s a completely honest gripe. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. So even if you lower Dolak’s grades correspondingly to get it, you know, 10 15% lower, he’s still at the same level as Pu Paul and he was Paul was a fifth round pick considered a massive value. Dolak is undrafted. So that speaks to the value the Rams got with his undrafted linebacker. And look, like I said before, there’s a lot of reasons he wasn’t picked up. We’re not saying this, you know, this guy’s a perfect prospect that somehow slid through the craps cracks, excuse me, but the reality is he is a phenomenal football player. He was a tackling machine at Buffalo. And the fact that Williams, the inside linebacker’s coach, mentioned during mini camps in OTAAS, that he has the right head on his shoulders and they expect him to go out and mentally handle things at a high level in training camp. Folks, to be an inside linebacker in the National Football League or any position in the NFL, to be totally honest, you need to have a high football IQ. You need to be able to pick up, understand, and relay the concepts. The fact that Dolac was so productive in college, the fact that his analytics are off the freaking charts when compared to his pure competitors, and the fact that he’s off to a good start as a smart football player, you talk about the anatomy of an undrafted free agent steel. This is what you’re talking about. All right, Miles, I know you’ve got a few thoughts on this, but first, Rams fans, the Ramly, as I like to say, in the comment section below. We’re talking undrafted free agent guys. Let me ask you this. Who is in your opinion the best undrafted free agent the Rams added in team history? Right? You can go a lot of different directions with this. You go old school, you go new school, kind of in between. Really curious where you guys lean here. So give us in your opinion the greatest undrafted free agent in Rams history and put them in the comment section below. And while you’re down there, make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletter via the Substack platform. There’s a link in the description box below. 100% free. Gets you extra content. We put in extra thoughts, articles, videos, extra stuff for you guys and we also highlight the comment of the week. So if you have a great comment, you may find yourself in the Substack uh letter. So make sure you sign it up for it. Again, link below 100% free. But M over to you now. What are your thoughts on this latest update out of LA? Yeah, Nick, by all accounts, it looks like the Rams have done it again. Another potential steel undrafted free agent coming in. And this doesn’t surprise anyone at this time. The Rams always get great young players in who can overperform in, you know, their draft status where they’re supposed to be. Obviously, you know, the big one most recently, Puka Nua, a guy selected in the fifth round, came to be top wide receiver in the NFL last year. It they’re just always looking and always able to find top performers, guys that outperform expectations. But when you look at what Dolac has done, it’s very surprising that guys like this slip through all the way through the draft and become undrafted free agents. Maybe he’s a touch on the smaller side. He could gain a little bit of weight. That’s not too difficult to do. But other than that, like you said, his stats are off the charts. His his, you know, analytics are crazy. And there’s a couple things I want to touch on. And it’s not just one outstanding season of analytics. the last three years he has played with Buffalo in significant snaps as well. Uh he’s done really really good. He’s gotten better every single year. In 2022 had high7s grades like 79.5 78 uh.8 coverage grade, 81 overall grade, which is very very good. You go to 2023, 85.9 run defense grade, great grade, 78.7 tackling grade, great grade. He’s getting better every year. He’s got great grades for three years back. So, that’s one thing that people always talk about. Are these guys one hit wonders? Are these guys that, you know, sat on the roster, had one really good season, and we’re not sure if they can have sustained success? Well, this guy definitely can have sustained success. But there’s one other aspect of this guy’s game I think is really, really interesting and very crucial uh to this Rams team that he can add a lot is his ability to make big plays, whether it’s in the pass rush or in coverage. really quite impressed me. You look at what he did this 2024 season. Five interceptions in coverage for Shawn Dolac. That is ridiculous. You look at a guy like Travis Hunter, a corner, supposed to be one of the best corners in all of college football. He had four interceptions last year. So, this guy is a ball hawk at the linebacker position, which is really quite a special skill to get. But for him to get five interceptions last year, I think that was great. But on top of that is also to get able to get five sacks, 16 total pressures and five sacks. That’s good, too. So, a guy that can both rush the passer to create pressure and make the play, get some big-time sacks, and drop back into coverage and grab those interceptions. Those are gamechanging type of players. Those are gamechanging type of plays. This is the player that you want on the Rams. You want a guy back there that you can get in there and he can start to change the the scheme of the defense. You got to, you know, got to look up front. We got to, you know, uh, fortify the offensive line. Shawn Dolak’s coming on the rush. He can get through, be able to run the passer. But we do that too much. He drops back into coverage. We got to be worried about this guy coming and grabbing a pass out of this guy. Interception, making a big play there as well. So Shawn Dollet, he covers a lot of bases. you know, he’s tenured. He’s done a lot of good stuff for multiple years now. Great analytics, matches up better than most of the top tier linebackers in this draft. Plus, he has some game-changing plays under his belt as well. This guy seems like the perfect mix, like you said, for the anatomy of an undrafted free agent steel that they that you look it up in the dictionary and Shawn Dolk’s name is probably written right there against next to undrafted free agent steel. I’m excited for the Rams about this guy and I think he could potentially make a lot of noise this season if he’s able to get on the field for the Rams. Yeah. So, the one concern I have with Dolak and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for him, but it’s over the course of his career, you talked about him getting better and improving and that’s critically important to me. That’s an indication. It kind of confirms what coach Williams said earlier in the article that we referenced about him being a smart player. I always like to say smart players, they improve. It makes sense. The more film you see, the more snaps you see, the more of the opposition you see, the better you get, right? I think that’s a fair fair indication of a high football IQ. But if you look at Dolak as a guy who got better and better and better, the question is, will he get enough reps? Will he get enough opportunities to get better and improve and becoming NFL quality linebacker? And I think the answer will be yes, because I think he’s the prime practice squad candidate. I think in preseason, the Rams, Shawn McVey, very intelligently for a long time, they play no starters or very, very few. They let the young guys get a lot of reps. So, you talk about a perfect opportunity. It’s not like he’s going to go to a team where they play the starters, you know, a lot of free agency and then they play the second string 90% of the time in free agency until the final preseason game. The Rams are the opposite. They’ll play nobody except the young guys every single preseason game. So, Dolan’s going to get a lot of opportunities, a lot of repetitions. So, it’s going to give him that chance to use what he does best, his high IQ, his mentality, learn the NFL game, figure it out. Now look, he’s a practice squad guy, I think, for most of the year, unless injuries occur. I think Puall is certainly more NFL ready. If you’re looking for a young linebacker to step up in the front seven of the Rams defense, but if you look at an opportunity maybe late in the season or certainly long term, Dolac is a guy to keep an eye on. He’s got all the tools you want. I know people look at his athletic skill set, a he’s a little smaller. How quick is he? His agility. I get all of that, but give me the guy who makes the play, right? Give me the guy who makes a tackle, who makes a stop, who intercepts the pass, who sacks the quarterback. Give me the guy who’s a good football player, right? This game is about winning with good football players. The Rams proved that with the addition of Puka Nua. They proved that with a number of other additions over the past few years. Great value finds, great strategies. They went out and got good football players that play good together. You do that, lo and behold, success happens. I see Dolak following that same pattern for this Rams squad. And look, I’m not saying he’s a day one starter. Maybe we’ll see what happens of course over the over the period of training camp and preseason, but I think it’s clear when you look at the data and you look at the situation, look at the fit, remember he’s going to get a lot of opportunities the way the Rams and McVey run preseason. I look at Dolac being a guy who will improve as the preseason training camp goes on. He’ll improve as the season goes on and either by the end of this season or sometime in the future, he’ll emerge as a quality player for this Rams defense.

The Los Angeles Rams are continuing their incredible run of finding hidden gems. And now the LA Rams have an undrafted rookie playmaker emerging. This is the latest in a long line of great Rams moves. Fans of the Los Angeles Rams should be excited by this news.

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