Last year was meant to be a rebuilding year for the Los Angeles Rams. They purged their roster of high-cost veterans, only brought in cheaper free agents and built a roster full of young, unproven players.
Fans didn’t have much to be excited about before the 2023 season outside of the Rams’ 14-player draft class, but the result of their roster teardown was a much more financially stable team. Heading into the 2024 season, the Rams are situated very well in terms of the salary cap.
They may only have $8.58 million in cap space right now, but they’ve managed to avoid taking on a boatload of dead money – which is cap space taken up by players no longer on the team – like they did in 2023. Last year, the Rams had the second-most dead money in the league at $74.2 million. As of now, they have just $4.2 million in dead cap, by far the least in the NFL, per Over The Cap. That’s $1.7 million less than any other team in football, for comparison.
That’s a sign of how well Les Snead and Tony Pastoors managed the cap this year, and also an example of why the Rams tore down their roster last year in order to set themselves up to be more aggressive in 2024 and 2025, which they were.
This offseason, the Rams signed Jonah Jackson, Colby Parkinson, Darious Williams, Tre’Davious White and Kamren Curl in free agency. They took full advantage of the cap space they had, ignoring the compensatory pick formula in order to bring in impactful players.
The Rams are in a great position next year, too. They have zero dead money on the books as of now and $34.2 million in cap space, which will allow them to make a run at high-priced free agents who can really help the team.
Now, Aaron Donald’s contract is still on the books for $25 million in 2024 and $9.67 million in 2025, but once he’s put on the retired list, that will convert to dead money. That’s not the front office’s fault, though. The only true dead money on the cap right now is Brian Allen’s $3.15 million, Logan Bruss’ $424K, Coleman Shelton’s $250K and Robert Rochell’s $172K.
Needless to say, the Rams did an excellent job navigating the cap and roster management process last offseason and it’s paid dividends.