Salary cap impact of Ndamukong Suh's fully guaranteed $14M contract
Cameron DaSilva
[
theramswire.usatoday.com]
The Los Angeles Rams weren’t playing around in their negotiations with Ndamukong Suh. They wanted to land him, and they wanted to do so badly.
According to Albert Breer, his one-year, $14 million deal is fully guaranteed with incentives that can push it to $15 million. That’s a huge amount of money to fully guarantee a player for one season, almost working as a franchise tag, of sorts. Granted, he’s one of the best defensive linemen in the league, and he’ll cost the Rams less than Sammy Watkins would have on the franchise tag.
The money in new Rams DT Ndamukong Suh’s deal is very real — per source, he gets a fully guaranteed $14 million base salary for 2018 in his one-year deal. Incentives can push it to $15 million.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) March 29, 2018
It’s unclear exactly what the incentives are, but they’re unlikely to do with being active on gameday. Suh has never missed a start due to injury and has played 99 consecutive games dating back to 2011. That year, he was suspended two games for stepping on a player.
So how exactly does this contract impact the Rams’ salary cap? Well, it essentially cuts their available space in half. According to Over The Cap, the Rams had about $24 million in cap space before signing Suh. His contract drops that number to $10 million, and that’s without John Sullivan’s two-year, $10 million deal, which incentives can increase to $15 million.
So really, the Rams are down to about $2.5 million in cap space. It doesn’t take a mathematician to know that’s not much money, especially with Los Angeles still needing to pay its rookie class in the coming months.
Not to mention, Aaron Donald still needs a contract extension, which will take some restructures and releases of other players to make happen. This is what makes an Odell Beckham Jr. trade so difficult to fathom, especially given his desire for a contract that will pay him $20 million per year.
