The Los Angeles Rams didn’t just stumble upon the players they drafted last week. Their scouts spent more than a year studying many of the prospects, even going back to the freshman and sophomore seasons of some players.

There’s a lot that goes into building a draft board, targeting certain prospects and evaluating how they’d fit on the roster, and it’s not all done by general manager Les Snead, Sean McVay and the front office.

Area scouts put in a ton of time going to different schools, watching tape and checking them out in person, helping the Rams build their draft board. Three scouts on the team’s staff shared their thoughts on several of Los Angeles’ top draft picks, including Taylor Rapp and Darrell Henderson.

Check out the clips below with highlights of what each scout said.

S Taylor Rapp and NT Greg Gaines

Vito Gonella on Rapp:

“The first time I heard the name Taylor Rapp was after his freshman year. He won Pac-12 Freshman Player of the Year and that kind of caught my attention and that’s when I started watching his film and diagnosing who he is as a player.

“Phenomenal character. He graduated high school in three and a half years. He enrolled at Washington a semester early. Very, very intelligent kid, not just no the football field but off the field, as well.”

On Gaines:

“Greg Gaines was a little shortly after that. We start studying these players really early on in the process before they even come out. Both of them were love at first sight, for sure.”

On both players:

“They always ask me, who would you like best out of your area? And those were the two guys that I actually mentioned, and that was in a draft meeting prior to the draft.”

CB David Long and OL David Edwards

Brian Hill on Long:

“David Long, he’s from L.A. He played at Loyola. It’s awesome having him back here, I know he’s excited, he’s fired up. Great kid, mature beyond his years. Super smart, has a great chance to learn from Aqib (Talib) and Coach (Aubrey) Pleasant. He’s athletic, he’s played in man coverage and he’s a great fit for us in that room.”

On Edwards:

“David Edwards, great kid from Chicago. Finance major. I think he’s going to own his own company one day. He’s going to represent us really well. He’s going to come in, do everything right. Hard worker, smart. … He was 215 pounds in high school running the triple-option. And he gets to college and he gains 100 pounds. He’s eating 5,000 calories a day. Just doing that, just showing that commitment and being like, ‘Hey, I’m not gonna have an ego, I’m gonna switch to tight end, I’m gonna switch to offensive line, do the dirty work.’ That shows a lot.”

RB Darrell Henderson

Billy Johnson on Henderson:

“Watching Darrell, we talk about this scouting, he was fun to watch. “We call it a ‘two-scooter.’ You scoot up your chair a little bit because we had that much fun just watching him. But he’s a fast guy, he’s a change-of-pace running back that can catch the ball really well out of the backfield, do a lot of things like that. He’s explosive and he’s not tall but he’s really rocked-up, muscular. And he’ll break tackles, so a lot of good things he can do there.

“He’s just another weapon and another piece that defensive coordinators are going to have to game plan for.”