Five young LA Rams players who will shine in 2021

The LA Rams will most likely become a mixed bag of veterans and rookies in 2021.  Still, the premium for NFL experience is costly nowadays. Many teams try to balance their books by signing up inexpensive and inexperienced younger players.  While that is true for many teams, The Rams take that one step further, as the team was actually the third-youngest team in the NFL in 2020. Imagine that, especially from a team that just made it to the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.

Youthful energy vs. sage wisdom and experience. The balancing act of those two opposing forces is nearly as impossible to manage as the annual NFL salary cap. Yet the Rams are finding the path between has-beens and johnny-come-lately’s to get the job done. Experience versus youth, peak performance versus improving, expensive versus undervalued.

Building a championship team is never easy. If it were easy, it would be common. It’s not. The ability to determine which player in the NFL is just about to hit his stride and shine is a tough call. Each year, the LA Rams have a bit better success rate than the average NFL team. But it’s not guaranteed to last.

Still, the team has found it necessary to choose their current roster-building methods out of necessity. They tend to overvalue their veterans, and then change their minds when those players underperform.

Those actions lead to sunk costs that become dead cap money. In 2020, that amounted to nearly $39 million, while in 2021, it adds up to nearly $31 million.  $70 million in cap hits for players no longer on the roster. So how can the Rams overcome that burden? With these five young players, that’s how