They give up a king’s ransom of draft picks to get top talent. Okay.
And then they sign these guys to contracts that are an albatross when trying to unload them.
Didn’t they get a 5th for Marcus Peters after giving up a high round pick? (He didn’t even get a new contract IIRC.)
They gave up 1st for Brandon Cooks and sign him to an albatross contract and then trade him for a low round pick!
This is the pattern.
I understand sending the message to players through out the league that if you’re elite, the Rams pay.
But, what I don’t understand is doing this within the context of trades. You control that player. He’s under contract.
The Rams are not big free agent shoppers. Sure, they signed Leonard Floyd and Ashawn Robinson as free agents. But that’s not the Rams modus operandi.
So, if they’re going to give up picks, sign players to albatross contracts (meaning, those contract negate higher picks coming back should the Rams want to trade these players later on), then there’s a diminishing-returns cycle built into this approach.
They’ll run out of high picks to trade for elite players if they keep this model. The emphasis changes to clearing cap space which, compared to fielding a competitive team, is a lower tier concern.
The only thing that can sustain this model is if they can hit on mid to low round picks and this last season makes this debatable.
We Not Me
