Rams salary-cap analysis: It’s time for Les Snead to push more chips towards the middle

The Los Angeles Rams have built up to this offseason. Following the 2023 reset, the 2025 offseason was the one that general manager Les Snead had in mind. In 2023, Snead cut and traded players like Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Floyd, and Bobby Wagner in order to reset the cap. The team took on $74.23-million in dead cap which was the second-most in the NFL.

It was all for this moment and this offseason. The 2023 season went better than expected, but it was the reset. In 2024, it was about setting up the next era of Rams football as the team had a first-round pick for the first time since 2016. The 2024 season was always the set up year. While the roster may look slightly different than the Rams may have imagined it with no Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp likely gone, there is still an opportunity to put more chips in the middle of the table.

From 2020 to 2022, the mindset was to find cheap free agents that could be had for a bargain. The Rams were forced to limit and be smart with their spending. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t continue to be smart. At the same time, the Rams haven’t necessarily always been in a position to spend. Heading into the 2025 offseason, Snead will have the 15th-most cap space to work with and the potential to create more. They have future money available, especially heading into 2027 when they have no big contracts on the books.

The potential is there once again for the Rams to be aggressive. With the window to compete with Matthew Stafford at quarterback closing and the ability to draft a rookie quarterback in 2026, the Rams should have the financial flexibility to borrow from future years of needs. That doesn’t mean set themselves up for a cap-hell like the New Orleans Saints or even Philadelphia Eagles who have void years and very little financial flexibility. However, the ability is there to be smart with those types of contracts.

Again, a reason why the Rams are in such a healthy contract situation is because they haven’t handed out massive contracts over the last few seasons. While they have committed money to players, none of those contracts are past or have an out in 2026. The Rams are building for this current window.

Below are the Rams top cap hits in 2025 which includes an additional two players who account for $19.6-million in dead money or voided contracts.

A few core Rams are on rookie contracts such as Puka Nacua and Jared Verse. Nacua has a cap-hit of just $1.09-million in 2025 while Verse has a cap-hit of $3.44-million. That matters a lot for premium positions such as edge rusher. Looking at the cap-hits, it becomes clear why it makes sense to move on from players like Kupp and Jonah Jackson. Both have top-5 cap-hits at their position while not providing anything close to top-5 production.

While the Rams have money, the key as always is how it’s spent. A critique of Les Snead over his past free agent windows is that players haven’t necessarily worked out in the way that they were envisioned. Allen Robinson was a free agent bust in 2022. Last year, the Rams got little free agent production from Jonah Jackson and Colby Parkinson.

Going through what the Rams did in 2023 will have been for nothing if the Rams don’t get a quality free agent out of it. The Rams need to spend, but they also need to be smart about their spending, ensuring that the player that they do acquire are fits within their ecosystem.

Obviously, the Rams would like to bring Matthew Stafford’s cap-hit down to invest more around him. Dotson has a high cap number, but he was also a top-5 guard in 2023 and from Week 9-17 last year, he was a top-three guard.

There are complaints about Higbee and Havenstein’s contracts, but both players barely have top-15 cap numbers at their positions. Last season, Havenstein was a top-10 right tackle while Higbee had top-3 numbers in yards per route and yards per target in his limited action.

Potential cap casualties

The Rams don’t necessarily have any obvious cap casualties to move on from this offseason. Kupp may be the only player that fits this. They have structured their contracts in a way that after this season, they can move off of some of their larger cap-hits. However, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have any flexibility. They can technically move on from players like Jonah Jackson and Colby Parkinson. With that said, the cap gain is minimal.

The fact that the Rams don’t have a lot of large contracts to dump is a sign of their positive cap health. This isn’t a team that needs to restructure deals and push money down the line to be paid later. There are minimal cuts that they can make, but a question has to be asked whether or not cutting the player is worth the cap number saved?

For example, is it worth paying Jonah Jackson $14-million to sit on the bench as a potential backup or cutting their losses and paying another player half the price? Of course, the Rams are still responsible for $11-million of Jackson’s contract. The same can be said about Parkinson. His contract isn’t as bad as Jackson, but with Higbee returning next year, his snap count likely goes down. Parkinson didn’t play in more than 50 percent of the team’s offensive snaps after Week 7. The lone exception was the wild card playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings only for him to play six snaps against the Philadelphia Eagles.

What’s next for Matthew Stafford?

The elephant in the room this offseason will be what the Rams do with Matthew Stafford. He has a $49-million cap-hit and the Rams would like to get an extension done. The question is what that contract looks like. While the two sides have been talking, “not much progressed after their opening conversations” according to recent reports.

Obviously the Rams would like to get Stafford’s $49-million cap-hit down. That lines up with about where he is from a talent perspective in the NFL as the fifth-highest paid quarterback. At the same time, the Rams would like to be able to capitalize on the final years of Stafford. If the Rams can get that down to the Baker Mayfield number around $35-million or even the Kirk Cousins number of $40-million, that would be ideal. Getting that to $42-million would even save money this offseason.

An ideal contract would be something like a two-year $90-million deal with $35-million paid this year, $40-million paid in 2026 and structured in a way that lowers that number if Stafford retires. The Rams could then add a $15-million void year in 2027 when they currently have the most cap space in the NFL. At that point, they may also be able to benefit from a rookie quarterback contract.

It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that and Stafford may not want to take a lower cap-number this year. The Rams also likely understand that a quarterback of Stafford’s level deserves a certain level of contract. From a logistical and eye-test standpoint, it doesn’t make sense for Stafford to get paid significantly less than quarterbacks like Kyler Murray and Geno Smith. Still, that is what Tom Brady did for years with the Patriots. In 2018 Brady was the 11th-highest paid quarterback.

Not every quarterback is Brady and Stafford has sacrificed a lot throughout his career. If he wants to get paid like a top quarterback, he should and there is no doubt that a team will do that. Is that team the Rams? We’ll see if this is a situation that gets worked out and benefits both sides.