The salary cap headaches for the Los Angeles Rams aren’t going to magically disappear next year when the salary cap is expected to rise. The team will still have some maneuvering to do in order to put together a top-flight roster once again.
The NFL set the salary cap ceiling for 2022 at $208.2 million. The cap could come in below that number, but as of now, it will not be higher than $208.2 million. That would be an increase of $25.7 million from this year, but the cap still will not have caught up to where it likely would’ve been if not for the setback caused by the pandemic last year.
Things will obviously change between now and next offseason, and each team will carry over some money from this year to next, but the Rams have $211.3 million in cap liabilities among the top 51 contracts in 2022. That means they’re projected to be $3.1 million over the salary cap ceiling, making them just one of three teams to be over the limit; the Cowboys (-$19.8 million) and Packers (-$29.2 million) are the others.
Of the 32 NFL teams, 25 are projected to have at least $10 million in cap space if the ceiling holds and the salary cap is set at $208.2 million. The Colts are projected to have the most space ($83 million), followed by the Steelers ($78.2 million), Jets ($67.1 million) and Dolphins ($66.6 million).
The Rams were forced to restructure a bunch of contracts this offseason just to get under the cap, including those of Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp and Andrew Whitworth. In doing so, it pushed money out to later years, thus shrinking the team’s cap space in the future.
There are a number of ways the team can free up cap space next year, such as restructuring or extending Matthew Stafford’s contract, restructuring Leonard Floyd’s deal or trading Rob Havenstein – as a hypothetical, of course.
Then there are the Rams’ future free agents. Next offseason, Darious Williams, Austin Corbett, Joseph Noteboom, Sebastian Joseph-Day, Kenny Young, Matt Gay, Micah Kiser, Ogbonnia Okoronkwo and Troy Reeder will all hit the market – though some will be restricted free agents.
The Rams have their work cut out for them, and it’s why making a Super Bowl run this year is so important. With all the expensive contracts they have, they’re fully in win-now mode.
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