The Los Angeles Rams recently extended the contracts of their star players Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald, numerous other mainstays also earn good money. Yet the Rams are moving within cap space. How can that be? A look behind the scenes.

Munich – 208.2 million US dollars is the salary cap, the salary cap space, for NFL teams in the coming season. The Los Angeles Rams have so far budgeted just under US$200 million of that for player salaries.

Recently, the Super Bowl winners signed defensive tackle Aaron Donald to a record deal and wide receiver Cooper Kupp to a high-dollar contract. At the beginning of the offseason, quarterback Matthew Stafford and Pro Bowler Bobby Wagner signed new contracts. And yet, the Rams are still within salary cap space. A balancing act.

Donald, Kupp and Ramsey: expensive fun

Because the quartet of Stafford, Donald, Kupp and Jalen Ramsey alone is responsible for just under a third of the complete cap hit for the upcoming season. That’s one reason why general manager Les Snead and his staff structure the contracts of lucrative newcomers like Wagner and wide receiver Allen Robinson so that they have little impact on this year’s cap space.

Robinson and Wagner will each collect only a base salary of $1.5 million next season, though both received signing bonuses in the double-digit millions. The latter will be distributed evenly over the term specified in the contract, the Rams added so-called “void years” for Wagner and Robinson each, which for Wagner, for example, ensure that it is a five-year contract, but it is actually a three-year contract with two “void years”, which distribute the cap space better.

The cap space is not a myth

Now, with the expensive deals the Rams – and, of course, some other teams that are particularly smart with cap space – are handing out, people are quick to talk about how cap space doesn’t really exist and is just a myth. This, of course, is not true.

The Rams also had to make cutbacks in squad planning in order to afford the contracts. Surely Head Coach Sean McVay would have been only too happy to keep mainstays like Von Miller, Darious Williams or Sebastian Joseph-Day for his defence.

Draft plays an important role

The Rams’ approach of retaining their best players with expensive deals while pouring a lot of draft capital into experienced veterans like Ramsey or Stafford is working. But that’s only because the Rams often get it right in the NFL draft, especially in the middle and later rounds.

After two seasons, teams’ drafts are usually easy to assess. In 2020, the Rams did not have a first-round pick either, yet seven of the newly drafted players are still on the roster. Four of them are expected to be starters in the upcoming season. A good haul in the fast-paced NFL.

“Even though there were a lot of jokes made about our strategy this year especially, the draft is immensely important to us,” Les Snead said at a press conference before this year’s draft.

Lots of risk

At the same time, this approach carries a lot of risk. If superstars get injured or the few rookies the Rams draft don’t perform as they should, head coach Sean McVay’s team can falter quickly.

“The Rams have some superstars and a lot of rookies, but no real ‘middle class.’ You have to have success in the draft to maintain that level,” NFL insider Ian Rapoport assessed the situation on “NFL Network.”

And the Rams aren’t done with roster planning. Wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. showed up at McVay’s wedding for an “organic free agent visit,” McVay joked. Maybe Les Snead will manage to put OBJ under the salary cap hat, too.