LA Rams re-signing CB Jalen Ramsey has epic importance

Setting the team budget

If you start adding up the price tags for the LA Rams free agents next year, you will quickly approach a $175 million team salary cap that is already burdened with players like QB Jared Goff and DL Aaron Donald. That’s because the Rams rushed to lock in their 2018 roster that got the team to the Super Bowl.

In the process, the team failed to address player productivity, declining pay scale to make room for future contracts, and bet on a rapidly rising salary cap that instead will likely drop by $23 million in 2021. That’s Budget 101, and a lesson the Rams will need to learn from when and the time comes to write new contracts. Of course, none of this matters to Jalen Ramsey nor to his agent. They have a price in mind, and it’s up to the Rams to get to that price or they’ll walk. So how can the Rams get there?  There’s no time like the present, right?

Leverage 2020

The first step is to understand what is most important to the player and the agent, in this order: Cash today. Guaranteed money. Average salary per contract season. Cash today means a signing-bonus in 2020. Guaranteed money means money that Ramsey will get regardless. The average salary per year is the measuring stick for all players. It’s a way to tell who is more valued in the NFL. That number is very important to Jalen Ramsey.

Right now, Jalen Ramsey hits the LA Rams for a $13,703,000 2020 salary cap hit. The latest cornerback to sign a large contract was Byron Jones, who received $25 million cash now, has guaranteed money of $35.5 million, and a per-season average set at $16.5 million. The Rams will need to do better with Ramsey.