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Rams43
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But I feel that AD’s admittedly huge salary is still affordable to the Rams.
It is NOT "admittedly huge" and it IS completely affordable.
AD (and Mack, and the others before them like Watt and Von Miller) are paid within an unofficial but real "top defender" bracket. AD's money is right in line in 2018 with what Von Miller got before and Mack is already more. There will be others in this bracket and they will all get more. Calling this money "huge" is just not in keeping with how contracts are working in the NFL. By the time AD's deal runs out it will be dwarfed by the newer ones top defenders will be signing.
The idea that somehow AD hampers their cap is just completely untrue. Most good teams spend around 60% of their cap on 10 top player deals, and with both Goff and AD, it will be 8-9 not 10, which means nothing. The idea is you're better off with one AD than with 2 other high contract guys.
And so yes it is affordable to the Rams. IMO people who are saying it isn't just don't look close at how the cap space works around the league.
And qbs get A LOT MORE than top defenders. By the time Mahomes is up for a 2nd contract in 2022 it will be in the high 30 Ms, low 40 Ms. Meanwhile unless the Chiefs are stupid, they will be paying their top defenders a lot by then too (just not as much as Mahomes). They're already paying OLB pass rusher Justin Houston nearly 21 M (just 1.5 M less than Donald) and they have to decide if they're keeping Dee Ford too. So by the time Mahomes gets his 30+M to 40+M deal the Chiefs could have TWO "top defender" contracts on the books.
So basically the Chiefs will be doing with possibly BOTH Houston
and Ford....PLUS Mahomes... exactly what the Rams will be doing with Donald and Goff. They understand the cap as well as the Rams do and they know that a good team can handle that.
If you actually look closely at what teams do with the cap around the league, it becomes pretty obvious that keeping both a top defender and a franchise qb does not damage your cap. And of course no team ever thrived by not paying elite players. That's not how things are done.
Who traded away an elite defender? Oakland. Does that look like cap brilliance? Who traded FOR a top defender? Chicago. Do they look like they don't know what they're doing?
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2018 07:58AM by zn.
