Timelining: LA Rams trade Goff + Picks for Stafford now reality

Why this could work out in the LA Rams favor?

I am skeptical of fast-tracked deals. The Matthew Stafford blockbuster trade deal is the poster-child of herd mentality. I understand that many teams believed that they are ‘one quarterback’ away from a Super Bowl run, but the LA Rams are not that type of team.  The Rams will need to use caution this time around.

But they have jumped into another blockbuster deal. The Rams had an inside track, and even though the Lions held the upper hand, the Rams knew that it was now or never for a veteran NFL quarterback.

Haste and urgency cause mistakes and the Rams haven’t the leeway to make such mistakes right now. There is a lot of work to be done. The Rams have 16 players who project to test the 2021 NFL Free Agency market. And while many expect that the Rams will get some instant salary cap relief, it’s time to tap the brakes on that.

The Rams are theoretically over the cap. And trading away Goff forces the Rams to absorb $22 million in dead cap money in 2021, much like the Brandin Cooks trade in 2020.  The financial benefits will happen at a future point in time.  But that is not to say that the Rams do not get some immediate relief in this trade. Had the Lions not taken Goff in this deal, it would have forced the Rams to find a new quarterback independently of trading away Goff.  And that was not a place that the Rams wanted to go after devaluing Goff in the past two weeks.