Teams across the league finally know how much they’ll be able to spend this offseason after the NFL set the salary cap for the 2021 season. After the floor was initially set at $175 million, and then upped to $180 million, the league settled on an amount higher than both levels.
The salary cap will be $182.5 million in 2021, down from $198.2 million last year. It’s the first time in the last eight years that the salary cap didn’t increase at least $10 million, a clear result of the lost revenue due to the pandemic.
With the cap set, the focus turns to the Rams and how much space they’ll have to play with during free agency. As of now, space is something they don’t have. According to Over The Cap, the Rams are over the limit by $33.14 million, needing to get under the cap by March 17 when the new league year begins.
The Rams are carrying $34.125 million in dead money from Jared Goff ($22.2M), Todd Gurley ($8.4M) and Leonard Floyd ($3.3M), which is a big reason for their being over the cap. Floyd’s dead money comes from his one-year contract signed last year, which had a void year in 2021 and an automatic $3.3 million in dead cap.
While being in the red is never a good thing, the Rams have some ways to clear cap space. Five players are candidates to have their contracts restructured, potentially freeing up a total of $56 million. They won’t restructure all of those contracts, but Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey are obvious candidates.
No matter what, though, the Rams aren’t going to be big spenders in free agency. They’ve sunk a lot of money into Donald, Ramsey, Cooper Kupp, Robert Woods and now Matthew Stafford, so they have to pick their spots when it comes to adding talent.