"First, I think that the owners and the Players Assoc will come to some kind of accommodation that will spread this cap issue over 4-5 years." If the league and the NFLPA don't crack that nut the Rams can do it on their own by restructuring contracts. So rather than pulling future cap space to the 2021 season the Rams can simply push this year's cap hits to future years. It's the same net result either way.
At the risk of being tedious, let me explain further.
Here are the projected cap numbers before covid hit:
2021 $215M
2022 $227.5M
2023 $241M
2024 $256M
Right now they're talking about a 2021 cap of around $180M. What you've suggested - and I agree 100% - is that the NFL and the League move cap space from future years to 2021. For the sake of argument, let's say it's $10M a year. If they did that the next 4 caps would look like this:
2021 $210M (The projected $180M cap plus $30M (obtained by reducing the cap by $10M in each of the next 3 seasons.)
2022 $217.5M
2023 $231M
2024 $246M
BUT! If the league and the NFL don't do that, the Rams can restructure some contracts and push cap obligations down the road. If they take $30M in salary off the books this year by converting salary to signing bonus they accomplish the exact same thing, just by lowering their cap obligations for 2021 instead of raising the cap limit: either way they gain $30M in head room.
Here's where I'd start. Aaron Donald's salary in 2021 is $19.892M. Convert $16M of that to a signing bonus and you reduce his cap hit by $12M in 2021 while adding $4M to his cap hit in each of the next three years. Other candidates include Ramsey, Kupp, Woods, Higbee, and Hekker. $30M is definitely doable.
AlbaNY_Ram