Coming into this season, inside linebacker was seen as a weakness for the Rams. And after seven weeks, nothing about that sentiment has changed. Yet, Les Snead and the front office made the shocking decision to trade the Rams’ best linebacker, Kenny Young, to the Broncos for almost nothing in return.
Los Angeles traded Young and a 2024 seventh-round pick to Denver for a 2024 sixth-rounder, essentially just moving up one round three years from now. It’s about the lowest return a player can net, but the Rams still saw value in making this move.
That’s because of the salary cap implications that come with trading Young. He had a cap hit of $2.183 million, none of which was fully guaranteed this season. Because we’re already seven weeks into the season, the Rams have already paid Young part of his salary, so they won’t recoup the same amount of cap space that they would’ve gotten had they traded him before the season began.
According to Nick Korte of Over The Cap, the Broncos will take on about $1.3 million of Young’s salary, which leaves the Rams with about $849,000 in dead money. That works out to a savings of $1.3 million for Los Angeles.
Kenny Young is on the final season of his rookie contract, of which he earned a Proven Performance Escalator raise to $2.183M. The Broncos will take on about $1.334M of that salary.
Young's the 2nd former Rams LB they've acquired, along with Micah Kiser.https://t.co/Ei03e4p3JG https://t.co/t3IeVdRdQz
— Nick Korte (@nickkorte) October 25, 2021
If you add that to their current cap space of $3.88 million, they now have about $5.2 million in spending money – much more than what they had last week before trading young and restructuring Rob Havenstein’s contract.
Knowing how Snead and the Rams operate, it’s very possible that a bigger move is coming. A team doesn’t trade its best linebacker and save $1.3 million without making another trade or signing to help the team – either at linebacker or elsewhere on the roster.
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