Two of the Los Angeles Rams’ most important (and priciest) free agents this offseason both reside on the defensive side of the ball with Cory Littleton and Dante Fowler Jr. set to hit the market. The Rams will have a really hard time finding the cap space to keep both of them, but they can prevent at least one from becoming free agents.
With the franchise tag at their disposal, the Rams can pay either player about $16.3 million for the 2020 season – assuming Littleton or Fowler would sign the tender. However, rather than committing most of their cap space to one player, the Rams will likely pass on using the tag.
Les Snead was on the Rams Revealed podcast with J.B. Long recently and said Los Angeles probably won’t apply the tag to any of its free agents. He didn’t completely shut the door on that option, though.
“As of today, I do not expect (to use) the tag but there is a window of time and ultimately, because there is a window of time, that means you may get some later data points that would say it might be best to use that tool in the toolbox,” he said. “And I know that can be a positive sometimes for players and a negative sometimes for players but the best thing to do if you decide to use the tag is to explain the ‘why,’ and it is a tool in our toolbox that we can use. And if it is the best thing for the Rams to utilize it, that’s what we’ll do.”
As for why the Rams probably won’t use the tag, the reasons are obvious. Having limited cap space, it’s hard to fathom committing more than $16 million guaranteed to one player with no long-term security beyond next season.
“The thing that happens when you do utilize a tag, depending on what kind of cap space you have, that does take up a big chunk of cap and it didn’t necessarily solve a long-term problem,” he said. “It’s more of a short-term solution. Short-term solutions can be beneficial sometimes because ultimately, the 2020 season will count for sure.”
The Rams have until March 12 to apply the franchise tag, which is four days before the legal tampering period begins. Assuming the Rams don’t use the tag, as Snead suggested, they have less than two weeks to negotiate with their pending free agents before the other 31 teams can jump into the mix.
Locking up free agents ahead of time is always good, but Snead sees a benefit to letting them get to the legal tampering period to gauge interest from other teams.
“Now, there’s an element that could be slightly out of the box because of the window – the negotiation window where you have 72 hours – I’ve often said that if you have good relationships with players, that there’s nothing wrong with going to the window and getting in the window because at that point in time, if Player A is not signed before the window and Player A and Team A want to be together, that must mean there’s a disagreement in basically probably the finances,” Snead explained. “The good thing about a player going to the window is at that point, his agent can figure out exactly what other teams are offering him and now there’s no guessing. Because even if a player were to sign before the window, sometimes he may have the thought – there could be that thought, ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m signed, but what if I went to the window? I wonder how much somebody else would’ve paid me. I wonder if my team would’ve matched that.”
It’s expected that Littleton and Fowler will reach the market and wade those waters, seeing how much they can make elsewhere. With how well they both played last year, interest is expected to be high.
For the Rams, it’s just a matter of whether they get offers that are out of their range – which would be a worst-case scenario.
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