I subscribe to the “elite first” strategy, too, dz, but only up to a point.

If we can extend AD eventually for $22 million as opposed to $24-25 quickly by utilizing a firm negotiating posture, then that’s a good thing, right?

And being top heavy with elite talent is a very nice problem to have, huh? Especially in this cap era. But Goff’s 5th year option will be for ‘20 and must be exercised next year.

Gurley, Cooks, Peters, Saffold, and Joyner won’t be cheap, either. And they’re all coming up like a SoCal sigalert on the 405 freeway.

Just off the top of my head, I come up with $105-108 million by ‘20 just for our top 6 players. Maybe even a little bit more because I think I was a bit conservative with my estimates.

Goff $30 million plus.
AD $22 million plus
Cooks $16 million
Gurley $12 million, give or take?
Peters $18 million, give or take?
Joyner $10 million

If zn’s prediction of $200 total cap by ‘20 holds true, and there’s no reason to doubt it, then the Rams must somehow sign the remaining 47 players for a total of $90-95 million. That’s an average of less than $2 million per player, of course. Good luck with that.

Not included in my 6 top salary players above?

Woods
Brown
Hav
Brockers
Barron
Hekker
Zuerlein

No question that AD is a superb player. But even he can’t play two positions at once nor can he play O for us to replace a player that was allowed to walk for cap reasons.

As you said, this is a tough line to walk when making personnel decisions that are deemed necessary for the long term team best interest. Emphasis team.

I do feel that S&M are likely to continue making good value picks, trades, and FA decisions both incoming and outgoing. They’d better because I also feel that they’re gonna be picking very late in each round for quite some time AND they’re gonna be forced to let top quality starters walk in the near future for cap reasons. Including the likes of Gurley, Saffold, Joyner, and Brockers. Among others.

We’ve got an inexpensive QB window through ‘20. Hope they can make decisions that maximize that brief window while they can. ‘Cause we both know that Goff is gonna cost an arm and a leg for the following 10 seasons. Lol.

To summarize:

Yeah, we should sign the elites first. But only after negotiating the best possible terms. And only up to the point that they feel they will lose more than they gain due to necessitated releases due to the cap ceiling.