The Rams salary cap model depends on choosing and developing mid to late round picks to become starters or rotation players so they can use their cap space for the Ultra Talented group of core players.
Usually this means they let some good players leave for big money and get a comp pick in return. This happens every year and next year will be no different. Edwards, Gaines and A. Robinson may all be casualties thought it would seem replacing Gaines and Robinson both would be a challenge. Better hope Bobby Brown step up this year and shows he is ready for 2023.
The Rams also live to win in the current year and they may restructure and push the salary cap issue down the road and live for today in 2023 if the can resign one of those guys at a reasonable price and if they don't think they have a good replacement on the roster or one that can be acquired at a low price.
But make no mistake all the restructuring of contacts will have a big price that will come due. I think the way they are restructuring contracts that our window for another Super Bowl is the next 2 or 3 years and after that all bets are off. Of course there are a lot of unknowns like if the NFL expands to streaming sites which are dying for live sports and gets more TV windfall profits which drives the cap up. If the cap goes up significantly the expensive salaries won't look so bad and may even be normal. I suspect that Donald's Contract will have lots of dead money if he retires following the 2024 season as has been speculated and it is how his contract is designed.
The good news is that you can get through the salary cap purgatory with a year or two of pain. Hopefully we have reloaded on talent to weather the salary cap storm that will eventually come and will see the the organization continue to shine and acquire great players to replace the ones that must eventually leave due to Father Time.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2022 04:22AM by David Deacon.
