For the past eight years, Billy Johnson has been the Rams' area scout covering Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky. The heart of the SEC, those states produce some of the best prospects in each year's draft, and Johnson is responsible for giving the Rams an initial report on every player.

"If there's a prospect out of that area, I'd better be the first one to know about them and relay that data back," Johnson said.

Some of Johnson's recent successes include outside linebacker Byron Young, inside linebacker Omar Speights and wide receiver Tutu Atwell. As the scouting department has endured some recent changes, Johnson was promoted to senior scouting executive, meaning he will take on more national scouting responsibilities in the upcoming year.

The son of a former Rams defensive line coach, Bill Johnson, a job in football was always in the cards for Johnson. It started as an internship with the team in 2013, and he's continued to ascend ever since.

"I don't know any other way to make money in the world, because that's the only thing I've ever seen," Johnson said.

Responsibilities

Johnson's schedule is similar to that of Vito Gonella, the regional scout for the west coast. He's on the road from August through November, visiting schools to gather character evaluations and scout all likely draft prospects from his designated area. That includes information on background, personality traits, learning habits, body type and film study.

Then, he takes a deeper dive into the tape (the most important variable) as the draft draws closer, traveling through the Pro Day circuit and providing his opinions to the rest of the front office.

Johnson visits all 21 FBS schools in his area and occasionally some lower-level colleges, but the "blue chip" programs like Alabama and LSU require a deeper look than most, demanding three visits during the season. Johnson said he spends a lot of time ensuring the "character book" he builds on those players is accurate, which takes years of relationship-building to achieve.

Establishing trust with a variety of sources at each school is paramount, as those coaches, trainers and staff members talk to front office personnel all over the league. It's especially important for a Rams team that values culture highly. Still, Los Angeles often isn't in a position to draft many of Johnson's favorite prospects, highlighting a key difference between his process and Gonella's: The wealth of talent is much more concentrated.

"I like to joke with Les, this was back when we had the 'f the picks' mindset or whatever," Johnson said. "Every time I would go to Alabama I would say I'm just shopping at a store I didn't have the money for, because we didn't have any first-round picks."

Two prime examples of this, Johnson said, were offensive linemen Landon Dickerson out of Alabama and Elgton Jenkins out of Mississippi State. Both players were drafted in the second round in 2021 and 2019, respectively, but the Rams' first selection came after each player was picked. They've become high-impact offensive guards in the NFL.

That's the reality of scouting in the SEC, the best players are often unattainable. Still, that also comes with some diamonds in the rough, like Speights, or game-changers at less competitive programs, like Atwell. Anyone who can compete in the SEC is worth exploring, and Johnson is responsible for that.

His job isn't to discover who's interested in certain players, but what they can bring to the Rams, regardless of their projected stock. That means scouting each player equally, regardless of their projected draft range. Johnson uses the Rams' "critical factors" as a starting block for his character and positional assessments and goes from there to build out a profile.

"We're just trying to acquire smart, passionate, explosive football players," Johnson said. "... But we do want to start with somebody who's going to fit our ecosystem, who can make our culture better and that we don't want to (have to) babysit."

As a senior scouting executive moving forward, Johnson will be responsible for national scouting. Current senior personnel executive Brian Xanders said they watch every draft prospect throughout the year, traveling to talk with sources during August and March. It will feature much less travel than Johnson has done as an area scout, allowing him to spend more time at home with his family in Nashville, Tenn.

"I always tell my wife we work in seasons, right?" Johnson said. "So, when I tell her 'here comes football season,' we're going to travel, we just know it's not a forever thing, it's a three-month thing."

Johnson will watch extensive film on 15-25 draft-bound prospects from each position, and 35-plus from a specified cross-check position. Johnson said he hasn't gotten into the specifics of that yet, but with his dad being a defensive line coach, that's a position he'd excel at evaluating.

"I'd be in middle school watching Atlanta Falcons defensive line tape," Johnson said. "I feel like my Rolodex is pretty deep there."

Successful Evaluations: Young, Speights and Atwell

Fittingly, one of Johnson's most recent successes is Young, an edge rusher. As an older yet raw talent coming out of Tennessee, Young had a unique journey to the NFL.

"Sometimes those stories come with some nightmares," Johnson said, "but when I walked in there, they just kept talking about how fun of a guy he was to coach, how hard he worked for them… there was a guy that had a high ceiling, a high output, a lot of potential.

"And when you started learning about the human being paired with some of the athletic traits that he had, the explosive get-off and speed and physicality, when you mix those together, you just thought there was a chance he would be able to reach that ceiling and it was worth taking a chance on him."

In college, Johnson was a walk-on long snapper at Georgia and played for Rodney Garner, the same man who coached Young at Tennessee as well as Rams general manager Les Snead at Auburn back in the day. Those strong connections to Garner made his praise of Young that much more enticing. Los Angeles drafted Young in the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft and have molded him into a high-level starter over the past two seasons.

Speights was a less-sought prospect, but garnered equal attention in terms of film study and sourcing, Johnson said. Giving those late-round or undrafted prospects the same respect as the blue chip ones has yielded significant results for Johnson and the Rams as a whole. Speights is just the most recent addition to that list.

In his first few months at LSU after transferring from Oregon State, Speights had already become one of the team's hardest workers. Johnson said he breezed through their strength and conditioning program before displaying elite instincts on the field, which intrigued Johnson, even though he didn't possess top-end speed or athleticism.

"We liked him just based on who he was as a person and thought there would be value just later on, and he proved us right," Johnson said.

"(Speights) was all about football, had a mindset that he was going to make the NFL, just extremely passionate. When (a source) really starts lighting up when you just talk about football character, that's really when you want to start taking notes."

After signing as an undrafted free agent, Speights flew up the Rams' depth chart last season, taking advantage of an injury to starting linebacker Troy Reeder. He entered the lineup midseason and never left, making multiple impact plays, including his first career sack in the Divisional Round against the Eagles. Speights’ intense training and film study only grew.

Meanwhile, Atwell's physical skills jumped off the tape. Johnson recalled telling Snead that he was "the fastest guy" in his area. Atwell converted from quarterback to receiver at Louisville, where the offense "ran through him," and Johnson saw how that background boosted his understanding of the position, as Atwell continuously improved.

"You do see the quarterback background, he's able to process on the fly, cerebral player, can identify things as the picture moves," Johnson said.

Four years after drafting Atwell in the second round, the Rams just re-signed him to a one-year deal, and Johnson thinks he's going to "surprise people" with his abilities in 2025.

Starting this summer, Johnson will have the chance to valuate players within the context of the entire draft class, something he hasn't done previously, but is looking forward to. It's the next step in the scouting evolution.

"Even though you may like a guy (as an area scout), you don't necessarily have a feel for what Ohio State has at the same position, or Oregon or whatever," Johnson said. "It's hard to make those comparisons, so I'm very excited to start from the top and work my way down in one position and really compare and choose players that would fit the Rams."