LA Rams News: Restructuring Goff and Havenstein to pay FAs

Details of NFL cap make a difference

The mechanics of freeing up salary cap space is pretty diverse, and the available cap space is a very fluid number. Diverse in that NFL teams have a wide range of methods to reduce their salary cap exposure. Fluid in that many events and actions impact how much free salary cap money the NFL team has available, and some of those impact items are automatic and are beyond the team’s ability to control.

We know that Rams general manager Les Snead indicated that he was very reluctant to approach any contracts for restructuring because it complicated the Rams’ future salary-cap space.  But the actions of releasing RB Gurley and trading away WR Cooks added significant dollars back to the Rams cap space in 2021 and beyond.  So while the Rams did bite the bullet in 2020, the actions cleared up many questions for the future.

But per all reports, that did not free up enough cap space. The last piece to the puzzle was reported by Ian Rappaport on April 27, 2020, just three days after reports of the original official free agent announcement.

So there it is. The LA Rams needed to restructure the contracts of multiple veterans to create enough salary-cap space. While the actual details of those newly restructure contracts may take days or weeks to become available, the Rams should now have enough space to sign their drafted players and the two non-NFL kickers in quick fashion.