So I was curious as to why we have such limited CAP against other teams. I mean even the freaking patriots have like $55M. Based on this site (I don't get the TEAM CAP #??) it made me start to question if Demoff is as good with the CAP as I thought. I mean if Tru and TA are both larger hits then Tom Brady something is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I like our players but Barron is an $11M hit, Brockers is and $11M hit and Quinn is a $10.5M hit. Sure hope he comes back to form or that's a big chunk for him too.
I'm not a CAP expert but seems these could of been broken out a little better but I didn't look at each year to compare in the future. I don't even get how the Browns have $100M. Their current totals are already like $100M and if the cap is about $167M how does that add up? Someone school me please.
http://overthecap.com/salary-cap/los-angeles-rams/
While I post rarely and I don't consider myself an expert on the topic I will take a shot at answering your question regarding salary cap space.
It is my opinion that Demoff does an amazing job with managing the Rams cap flexibility. I use the word flexibility, because while we may not have much in the way of cap space currently we have the ability to sign any player we want at this point.
Someone stated that the Rams don't backload many of their contracts and that is 100% true. They instead generally opt for a large roster bonus in the early portion of the contracts. That roster bonus unlike a signing bonus isn't prorated over the entire length of the contract (limited to 5 years proration). For example, last year our big signings both in the offseason and in season were Barron, Brockers, and Austin. All three got relatively small signing bonuses so that money isn't pushed against future salary cap figures. Barron is due $5 million in roster bonus this year, Brocker's roster bonus is $9 million, and Austin's roster bonus is $11,477,116. The best part about this structure is that if the Rams wanted to spend a ton on free agents they could convert one or even all of those roster bonuses to signing bonuses allowing them to be prorated over the life of the contract. The player receives the money now, so it doesn't bother them at all, and the team gets the cap room they need.
Just to further my example if we restructure Brocker's bonus to a signing bonus our current $19 million in cap space increases to $25 million. Move Austin's as well and we have $34 million, throw in Barron's and we are at $38 million.
Quinn has a bonus of nearly $4 million this year as well, but I wouldn't want to move any of his money to future cap hits considering his injury history causing him to create more dead space to cut him in the future.
If we want to create even more space, a long term deal for Ogletree could create quite a bit by moving most of the money in the deal to next years cap via these same roster bonuses. Obviously a long term deal for Tru would accomplish a cap savings as well.
Hopefully this helps. I remember John Elway being asked about the salary cap ramifications of getting Manning several years back and he basically said that if they want any player at all they can figure out a way to get them on the team. Which is true to a certain extent although if you keep kicking the money down the road eventually you will be the cowboys having to cut probowler Demarcus Ware just to get under.
