I've been trying to come to a resolution on what was making me feel so uncomfortable about this trade. On one hand, I love the idea of having a shutdown corner. On the other hand, it felt strangely unnerving that we may have violated the "don't mortgage the future" rule in a way never before seen.
Up until now, up until the Ramsey trade, the Rams hadn’t done anything that out of the ordinary. They traded a bunch of high picks for a QB. Well, that’s not unusual. They added a bunch of high priced FAs while their QB was on a rookie contract. Well, that’s been the norm for a while now. But then, they paid their QB big money and all the big deals were supposed to stop. All the trading away of high picks was supposed to stop. They were supposed to conform to the norm that once you pay your QB big money, you needed to keep all your high picks so you could add cheap quality labor.
It’s been thought that you couldn’t be successful tying up all your salary cap in a handful of players and not have many quality players on cheap contracts. I’m not a cap expert, but I suspect once the Rams sign Ramsey to a big contract either this year or next, they will have more money tied up in fewer players than any other team. On top of that they will also have fewer quality players on rookie contracts than any other team, and no first round picks to help them abate that situation.
I don't believe this has never been done successfully in the cap era. No one has been this aggressive, some would say crazy, before. Is Snead crazy? Maybe. Is he gambling? Probably. Is he taking a big risk? Almost certainly.
The Rams are all in on Goff. There is no way out now after paying him and then stripping themselves of their next two first round picks. If Goff falls apart, the Rams will be a mess for at least 5 years. They put all their eggs in one basket and killed the goose.
They also have to figure out how they are going to support their handful of super salary players with quality players on cheap contracts without any first round picks, and no room to add any high price FAs.
Now, I’m not saying that it won’t work. What I’m saying is that Snead has some huge balls to try something this risky, something that has never been done before, and on the surface looks scary as hell.
~ max ~
“The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity.” - Alexander Hamilton
