Los Angeles Rams acquire No. 1 overall pick in 2016 NFL draft

The Rams first season back in Los Angeles just got a little more exciting.

The team announced Thursday morning that it has acquired the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft, moving itself into position to land what it hopes will be a franchise quarterback. The question now: Will it be North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz, or Cal’s Jared Goff?

The Rams’ pressing need behind center was obvious, what with them ranking dead-last in the league in total offense. As much as the franchise tried to insist that Case Keenum was its starter for the time being, it was clear that the NCAA’s all-time passing leader wasn’t a viable long-term answer.

And so the Rams jumped up 14 spots, giving up six draft picks to Tennessee in exchange for the chance to take who they think will be the best player on the board. The Titans will receive the No. 15, 43, 45, and 76 picks in this year’s draft, along with first- and third-round selections in 2017.

The Rams also got a fourth- and sixth-round 2016 picks in the blockbuster trade.

Are Chargers stadium hopes doomed by San Diego confusion and dysfunction?

San Diego Union Tribune columnist Kevin Acee is mad as hell about what’s going on with the Chargers stadium effort in San Diego, and he isn’t hiding behind his keyboard about it.

Acee penned a pointed, detailed commentary today about all the stadium dysfunction in San Diego, essentially throwing shade on everyone from Mayor Kevin Faulconer to Cory Briggs to the JMI to the powerful hoteliers in town to all the lawyers working the various sides of the situation to the Chargers themselves.

Holding back no punches, Acee wrote:

I’m trying to keep my cool, because cool is the state of mind that facilitates progress.

But this stadium situation is ridiculous getting drunk on preposterous, stuck in the mud of stupid.

And I know I’m not alone.

They’re losing us.

Cory Briggs. The mayor. JMI. The hoteliers. The naysayers. The lawyers. The Chargers.

You know what happens when people get frustrated, don’t understand something and feel like they can’t affect any sort of change no matter what they do?

Fed up folks shut down.

In this case – the mysterious, maddening case of the Chargers stadium saga – that would mean not voting or voting “no” (or maybe voting for the thing they didn’t mean to vote for).

I’m fighting the urge to simply stop writing. This is insane floating on ludicrous lost in a sea of nonsense.

The Chargers and Cory Briggs meet. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith basically says Briggs’ Citizens Plan is screwed six ways to Saturday. Briggs says Goldsmith is wrong. Briggs says he has settled with hoteliers and has their endorsement. The hoteliers say they have not settled nor endorsed anything.

This all happened in a span of about 24 hours at the beginning of this week.

It may well have been the tipping point, as if we weren’t already to that point. Enough. Already.

Can someone just have the gumption to say that we need to decide what we’re doing here? I wasn’t in the military. I’ve never run a major corporation or a municipality or even, one tiny woman would argue, worn the pants in a family. But I feel qualified to opine that we need a fricking plan.

You can read the story here, but in a nutshell it outlines the utter confusion of the various plans and inititiaves and support and resistence and voting requirements that has Acee – and undoubtedly plenty of others – throwing up their hands right about now.

How does this relate to Los Angeles?

Well, the Chargers have been cleared by the NFL to relocate to Los Angeles and have a deal in place with the Los Angeles Rams to join them should their last-ditch efforts to get a stadium plan approved in San Diego fail.

In talking to sources close to the Chargers, it’s pretty cut and dry at this point: Let’s all work together and devise and approve a plan here in San Diego, or we’re outta here. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

You’d think with that kind of urgency at hand everyone would be working to get on the same page in San Diego. But after reading Acee’s column, it doesn’t seem like people are reading from the same book, let alone page, down there.

Obviously there is still time for the Chargers and San Diego to get things sorted out, but the clock is definitely ticking.

One personal observation: it’s beyond ironic to me that some of the same people who chastised the Chargers all last year for not having confidence the mayor and the city and local leaders could help deliver a stadium plan – hence the play they made on Los Angeles – are now expressing doubt the plan they are supporting is prudent or approvable.

Having visited with Chargers owner Dean Spanos over the course of last year, one of the main takeaways was he sincerely wanted to be in San Diego, but he was concerned the necessary funding would be supported and approved by voters and that the project would get tied up in courts for years with no guarantee of ever coming to fruition.

Basically, some of the same exact concerns being articulated by local leaders right now.

In retrospect, maybe the Chargers were right to be so skeptical.

Spanos’ fear was losing Los Angeles as an option if he pursued a doomed San Diego plan rather than securing his position in L.A.

But he can attack the situation much more confidently now, his spot in Los Angeles guaranteed. Which is why he put off joining the Rams at least one year in order to pursue a San Diego stadium one final time.

He either gets a new stadium in San Diego, or he’s off to Los Angeles. One way or another, he’ll get clarity.

Judging by Acee’s column, though, clarity in San Diego is hiding behind some dark, dysfunctional clouds.

Florida court issues arrest warrant for Rams RB Tre Mason

Rams running back Tre Mason is facing arrest after missing a court date on Monday, according to Florida court records.

Broward County has issued a warrant for the 22-year-old’s arrest, the latest turn in his case following his March 5 arrest on multiple misdemeanor charges. Mason had been taken in on charges including reckless driving, possession of marijuana, and resisting arrest. A police report indicated that the former Auburn star was subdued with a Taser.

Mason will be held on a $1,500 bond once he is taken into custody.

Rams G.M. Les Snead says team will be prepared to move up or back in draft

With then NFL Draft looming in two weeks, the Rams are in organizational prep mode as they sort through their Top 30 player visit list, build their draft board and identify trade partners should they try to move up or back in the first round.

The trade homework is of particular importance this year to the Rams. With an obvious need to identify their long-ranger quarterback of the future, but armed with the 15th overall pick, the Rams might have to be aggressive moving up in the draft to get a chance to select either Carson Wentz from North Dakota State or Jared Goff from Cal.

Wentz and Goff are considered the two best quarterbacks in the draft, but both figure to be gone before the Rams make their scheduled first pick. So, it’s incumbent on them to identify potential trade partners in the two weeks leading up to the first round.

Or, should Goof and Wentz prove out of reach, be prepared to pursue other plans to secure their long range quarterback.

Rams general manager Les Snead told Bruce Murray and Mark Dominik today on The SiriusXM Blitz that he and his staff will be prepared for any trade scenario come draft day.

Snead, taking a break from Rams draft meetings at their temporary headquarters in Oxnard, said the prep work on possible trades happens well before draft day.

“The who key is you try to identify teams that are willing to move back, so you know who to contact when the clock starts getting closer to zero,” Snead said. “And also, as for moving back, you get a feel for who wants to come up. So you work it both ways, you prepare, but those 10 minutes, 15 minutes will tick down pretty quickly.”

Snead did warn that knowing who is willing to move down is much different than actually having a deal in place.

“And a lot of times that dance partner is going to tell you, yes they want to, for the most part, but they do want to wait to see who falls to their pick,” he explained. “And if a certain player falls to their pick, you may have had a dance partner but all of a sudden things go differently or they had their Player A scenario fall to them.”

In other words, no dice.

“And at that point, you start scrambling,” Snead said.

NFL won’t live-stream London games following Twitter deal

Fans during cheer as the St. Louis Rams practice with the Dallas Cowboys at River Ridge Playing Fields in Oxnard, CA, Monday, August 17, 2015. (Hans Gutknecht/Staff)

Fans during cheer as the St. Louis Rams practice with the Dallas Cowboys at River Ridge Playing Fields in Oxnard, CA, Monday, August 17, 2015. (Hans Gutknecht/Staff)

Cord-cutting Rams fans might have a harder time trying to watch the team’s October game against the New York Giants in London.

An NFL spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that the league will not live-stream its three London games this upcoming season, a reversal from its broadcasting strategy a year ago. The news comes less than a week after the NFL announced a 10-game streaming deal with Twitter, one that Re/code reported to be worth less than $10 million.

However, this latest deal deal will be restricted only to Thursday night games, according to Reuters. Yahoo! paid $17 million to live-stream the Jaguars’ 34-31 win over the Bills at at Wembley Stadium last October, but the NFL told Reuters that it does not have plans for a separate deal to stream this year’s contests across the Atlantic.

“When we discussed potential streaming packages with interested parties, there were many options on the table, including the London games,” a league spokesperson told Reuters in an email. “Ultimately the package we agreed on with Twitter involved ten of our Thursday night games which we felt was the best option at that point.”

That leaves out Los Angeles’ Oct. 23 tilt against the New York Giants at Twickenham Stadium, as well as games at Wembley Stadium between the Jaguars and the Colts (Week 4), as well as Cincinnati and Washington (Week 8).

More than 15 million unique viewers tuned into last season’s London live stream, according to Yahoo! and the NFL, but a streaming industry consultant told Variety that those figures were skewed by auto-streaming.