The Rams and Texans struck a deal on Thursday night with Los Angeles sending Brandin Cooks and a 2022 fourth-round pick to Houston for a 2020 second-round pick. This wasn’t necessarily a financial move for the Rams, considering Brandin Cooks’ dead cap hit is $5 million more than it would’ve cost the team to keep him, but it did net them the No. 57 overall pick in a wide receiver-rich draft class.
As badly as this trade will hurt the Rams’ salary cap, it wasn’t necessarily a bad move to get out from under a bloated contract for a player with a history of concussions. Cooks was also coming off arguably the worst season of his career, so his stock was on the decline.
Still, it’s not a deal that greatly benefits the Rams in 2020.
Analysts across the media landscape don’t view it as a terrible decision by the Rams, giving them passing grades for the trade with Houston. Here’s a roundup of the marks Los Angeles got from ESPN, CBS Sports, Sporting News and The Athletic.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell: B
… Given the Rams’ current situation, it’s easy to see how trading Cooks makes sense. Los Angeles was in a desperate cap situation and down its first-round picks in 2020 and 2021 after the Jalen Ramsey trade. Jared Goff‘s passer rating and QBR both declined without Cooks on the field. But as the team tried to find a Plan B for the 6-1 defensive front it saw early in the season and changed its running game, it began to seem like the Rams might operate best out of 12 personnel, which would put Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett on the field and force the Rams to leave one of Cooks, Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods on the sidelines.
CBS Sports’ Jeff Kerr: C+
Kudos to the Rams for finding someone to take on Cooks’ contract, but the front office continues to mismanage their cap situation and could have made this deal weeks ago. The Rams failed to trade Cooks before March 15, giving him a $4 million roster bonus in his contract. Then they didn’t trade him before March 20, which fully guaranteed his 2020 salary of $8 million.
Sporting News’ Austin Anderson: B-
The Rams do benefit by now having four picks in the first three rounds of the 2020 draft; there, they can add young players on affordable four-year contracts. In addition, the team still has two good receivers in Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp, who is going into the last year of his rookie deal. Josh Reynolds stepped in well when Cooks and others went down with injuries last year; he’ll be a solid replacement as the third receiver.
The Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia: C
If we look at this deal in isolation, given the circumstances, they at least got a nice return for Cooks. But we have to account for the big picture. The Rams are taking a cap hit of $21.8 million for a player who is not even going to be on their roster.
They’re digging their way out of a massive hole by acquiring draft capital and creating cap space for 2021, but the Rams were the ones who created the problem in the first place. They do not deserve any gold stars here.
Les Snead and the Rams front office as a whole have made a mess of their salary cap situation, and this is just the latest example of that. Their deals with Todd Gurley and Cooks in 2018 were costly and they’re now feeling the impact of those contracts only two years later.
But, they’ll have a chance to replace each player at a much lower cost either in the draft or with a player already on their roster.