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theramswire.usatoday.com] Limited cap space this year shouldn't prevent Rams from signing free agents
Cameron DaSilva
March 22, 2023 10:05 am PT
No team has been less active in free agency so far than the Los Angeles Rams. They’ve signed one player, bringing back Coleman Shelton with a two-year deal. Other than that, they’ve sat on the sidelines.
It’s been a frustrating few weeks for fans, watching Jalen Ramsey get traded and seeing both Leonard Floyd and Bobby Wagner get cut. The Rams’ goal in all of this has been to clear cap space, which they’ve managed to do.
But even after trimming some big contracts, they have just $8.4 million available, according to Over The Cap. That’s not much considering the Rams will still have to sign their draft class and build out a roster that’s lacking talent.
The salary cap isn’t what’s preventing Les Snead from bringing aboard outside free agents. It’s the Rams’ own front office doing that. If they really want to, they can sign just about any player who’s still available.
All they would need to do is structure the contract to have a low cap hit in 2023 and a larger one in 2024 when the Rams have more space available. As of now, they’re projected to have $55.5 million in cap room next year.
This isn’t anything new to Snead and the front office, either. When they signed Joe Noteboom to a three-year contract that averaged $13.3 million per year in 2022, his cap hit was just $3.5 million in the first year. They did the same with Brian Allen. His deal averages $6 million per year, but his cap hit in Year 1 was only $1.8 million.
Obviously, structuring a contract that way is beneficial in the short term, but it does handcuff the team down the road, especially if that player doesn’t pan out the way the Rams hope. Bigger cap hits in future years makes it tougher to move on from the player, which the Rams are learning with Allen Robinson; he had a $4.3 million cap hit in 2022, but it jumped to $18 million this year and $18.55 million next year.
So again, if the Rams want to sign Frank Clark or Marcus Peters or any other free agent right now, they’re more than capable of doing so. They just don’t seem to have an interest in doing so, knowing it will hurt their cap situation in 2024 and 2025 – the years in which they could truly rebuild with a first-round pick and more cap space.
Don’t let their limited cap room this year lead you to believe they can’t sign free agents. There are ways to manipulate the cap to fit almost any contract in. It just comes at the cost of future years, which is where the Rams’ real focus is.
