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Rams & Other NFL Teams That Find Themselves in Salary-Cap Hell
BY Mike Tanier / February 18, 2020
Welcome to the Salary Cap Inferno, the bad place where teams are punished for their financial sins of the past.
NFL free agency is fast approaching, and while some teams are getting ready for a spending spree, others find themselves in financial H-E Double Hockey Sticks. Instead of bidding on big names and hoping to get better, they'll be forced to let their own free agents go, release or restructure the contracts of some of their starters and hope the austerity program doesn't make them significantly worse.
There's more to the Cap Inferno than just being low on cap space. Teams that have lots of budding superstars under contract, are a heartbeat away from the Super Bowl or know they are preparing for a full-scale rebuild don't qualify. The rings of the Cap Inferno are reserved for teams guilty of overspending, bad planning, wishful thinking or living the high life for too long, plus some minor venial sins like inking a few too many regrettable contracts.
So abandon all hope, ye who enter here: It's time for a truly hellish journey through the realm of salary-cap nightmares.
Ring of the Cap Inferno: Los Angeles Rams (Cap space: $14.7 million)
Mortal sin: Building a tiny Super Bowl window
The Rams assembled their roster and their budget around winning in 2018 or 2019, and they almost pulled it off. But they now must pay the price. Their ledger is top-heavy with massive cap numbers, a few of which are worth the money (Aaron Donald at $25 million), many of which are not (Jared Goff at $36 million), and at least one of which needs to be renegotiated pronto (Jalen Ramsey at $13.7 million in the final year of his rookie contract). The Rams also traded away their first-round picks until 2022 for Ramsey, leaving them with neither an easy way to get better nor an exit strategy for moving on from pricey veterans.
Venial sin: Seduced by rushing stats.
The Rams are reportedly working on ways to extract themselves from the clutches of the extension they gave Todd Gurley II in 2018, which runs through 2023 and will cost $17.25 million in cap space this season for near-replacement-level running back performance.
Penance:
The Rams are sentenced to tread water at the wild-card level for the foreseeable future. They may be forced to spend a chunk of their little available cap space this offseason retaining 38-year-old left tackle Andrew Whitworth so the whole offensive line doesn't crumble, taking Goff and Gurley with it. Deals like that will only result in the roster getting older and more expensive before it gets better. But the Rams have so much invested in Goff and others and so little draft capital that they couldn't rebuild even if they wanted to.
View: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2876758-rams-bears-jaguars-and-other-nfl-teams-that-find-themselves-in-salary-cap-hell
Click above to read more of other teams mentioned in this article.
BY Mike Tanier / February 18, 2020
Welcome to the Salary Cap Inferno, the bad place where teams are punished for their financial sins of the past.
NFL free agency is fast approaching, and while some teams are getting ready for a spending spree, others find themselves in financial H-E Double Hockey Sticks. Instead of bidding on big names and hoping to get better, they'll be forced to let their own free agents go, release or restructure the contracts of some of their starters and hope the austerity program doesn't make them significantly worse.
There's more to the Cap Inferno than just being low on cap space. Teams that have lots of budding superstars under contract, are a heartbeat away from the Super Bowl or know they are preparing for a full-scale rebuild don't qualify. The rings of the Cap Inferno are reserved for teams guilty of overspending, bad planning, wishful thinking or living the high life for too long, plus some minor venial sins like inking a few too many regrettable contracts.
So abandon all hope, ye who enter here: It's time for a truly hellish journey through the realm of salary-cap nightmares.
Ring of the Cap Inferno: Los Angeles Rams (Cap space: $14.7 million)
Mortal sin: Building a tiny Super Bowl window
The Rams assembled their roster and their budget around winning in 2018 or 2019, and they almost pulled it off. But they now must pay the price. Their ledger is top-heavy with massive cap numbers, a few of which are worth the money (Aaron Donald at $25 million), many of which are not (Jared Goff at $36 million), and at least one of which needs to be renegotiated pronto (Jalen Ramsey at $13.7 million in the final year of his rookie contract). The Rams also traded away their first-round picks until 2022 for Ramsey, leaving them with neither an easy way to get better nor an exit strategy for moving on from pricey veterans.
Venial sin: Seduced by rushing stats.
The Rams are reportedly working on ways to extract themselves from the clutches of the extension they gave Todd Gurley II in 2018, which runs through 2023 and will cost $17.25 million in cap space this season for near-replacement-level running back performance.
Penance:
The Rams are sentenced to tread water at the wild-card level for the foreseeable future. They may be forced to spend a chunk of their little available cap space this offseason retaining 38-year-old left tackle Andrew Whitworth so the whole offensive line doesn't crumble, taking Goff and Gurley with it. Deals like that will only result in the roster getting older and more expensive before it gets better. But the Rams have so much invested in Goff and others and so little draft capital that they couldn't rebuild even if they wanted to.
View: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2876758-rams-bears-jaguars-and-other-nfl-teams-that-find-themselves-in-salary-cap-hell
Click above to read more of other teams mentioned in this article.
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