With 11 picks in the NFL draft, the Los Angeles Rams will need to reserve some cap space for their incoming rookie class. However, they don’t need to save a ton of room.
That’s because eight of their 11 picks are on Day 3, ranging from the fifth to the seventh round. Their other three picks are in the top 100 at Nos. 36, 69 and 77. With no first-rounder, the cost of the Rams’ rookies will be lower than most teams’ draft classes.
According to Over The Cap, the Rams’ rookie pool – which is the “total cost in cap dollars that a team needs to sign its rookies” – is $10.24 million. That seems like a lot, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
The cap space required to sign a rookie class is less than that “because every draft pick signed will replace a player already counting against the cap.” Only the top 51 players will count against the salary cap, and at the moment, the Rams only have 45 players signed, so not every rookie will replace a player already on the roster since 51 of them count toward the salary cap.
Over The Cap estimates that the Rams’ cap space needed to sign their rookie class is $1.99 million. That’s calculated by taking the rookie pool ($10.24 million) and subtracting the value of $750,000 multiplied by the number of picks (11).
- $10.24M – $8.25M = $1.99 million
Obviously, this isn’t set in stone because the Rams can (and probably will) trade some of their picks during the draft, either to accumulate more selections or by packaging picks to move up the board. So the total cap space needed to sign the class could increase or decrease depending on the Rams’ moves.
But at the moment, they have $10.63 million in cap space and only $1.99 million will be needed to sign their rookies. That won’t give them much trouble at all.
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