No way Rams use R1.26 on ILB Consensus BigBoard has Knight right at R3.90. Just a point of reference.
It's possible they wouldn't draft an ILB at #26..... but if Jihaad is there, I don't believe there is any way that pass on him. I can understand people using history to tell them we won't draft an ILB that early.... but I think the historical analysis is missing some key points. The Rams have had a plan that involved CURRENT players at ILB going into the draft all those years. Thus, our early picks were focused on other positions where a current plan didn't exist. When our ILB plan was more questionable going into a draft, we drafted Earnest Jones. We didn't draft an ILB last year because Jones was still in our plans when the time the draft came.
Our ILB development of existing players impacted ups not drafting an ILB early as well. Littleton and Kiser were both in-house developed guys who projected as starters going into their 2nd season. Reeder shined in camp early as a UDFA and got a chance to play after Kiser got hurt.
We've had an existing plan going into all of these drafts.
But today..... we have no plan outside of Speights. The biggest tell to me is that we didn't bring back Rozenboom even after 100 plus tackle season. IF we weren't looking use draft capital on an ILB we would have brought back Rozenboom. We haven't brought Reader back either.....yet....which tells me that we're looking use some draft capital on someone to pair with Speights, and IF you'd bring Reader back it would be more for veteran depth.
It's possible Jihaad won't be there at #26.... it's possible we wouldn't draft another ILB besides him that early at #26 (which would be ok because there are some really good ILBs that would be there in the 3rd round for us). But I cannot see any way that we'd pass on Jihaad Campbell if he's there.... Adding him to our young defense honestly gives potentially one of the best Defenses in the league. Speights and Campbell give us the best ILB combo we've had since we've ran the 3/4 defense. We'd have a defense of young hungry aggressive players ..... no more practice squad players manning the ILB position.