Two weeks after their season ended with a playoff loss to the Packers, the Rams made a major change at quarterback. On Saturday night, they agreed to trade Jared Goff and three draft picks to the Lions for Matthew Stafford.
It’s a rare quarterback-for-quarterback trade, but one the Rams felt they had to make – as evidenced by them trading two first-round picks with Goff. The deal comes less than two years after they signed Goff to a four-year, $134 million extension, which was set to begin in 2021 and run through 2024.
Obviously, there are salary cap ramifications of trading away a quarterback set to make $33.5 million. But this deal won’t hurt the Rams financially the way some may have thought – and that’s largely because Stafford’s deal is affordable.
Here’s the breakdown of Goff’s impact on the Rams’ salary cap, according to Over The Cap.
- 2021 dead money: $22.2 million
- 2021 cap savings: $12.75 million
So essentially, instead of paying Goff $34.75 million in 2021 to be on the team, he’ll cost the Rams $22.2 million. It’s bad business to pay a player that much to be on another team, but Les Snead knew exactly what he was doing, just like with Brandin Cooks and Todd Gurley.
As for Stafford, he has two years left on his contract. His cap hits the next two seasons are as follows:
- 2021: $20 million cap hit
- 2022: $23 million cap hit
So if the Rams keep Stafford’s contract as-is, they will be paying $42.2 million for Stafford’s contract and Goff’s dead cap in 2021, which is more than the $34.75 million Goff would’ve cost them if he was kept on the team.
But, as Jason Fitzgerald of OTC points out, the Rams can restructure Stafford’s contract once the trade is complete to lower his cap hit from $20 million to $4.86 million to save them $15.14 million.
That would make Stafford’s cap hit $26.8 million in 2022, so it wouldn’t hinder them much in the final year of his contract. Given their situation with the cap dropping in 2021, this is an obvious move to push money out toward 2022.
So as difficult as it seemed Goff’s contract would be to trade, the Rams could come out actually saving money by swapping quarterbacks – at the cost of losing two first-round picks, of course.
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