Why should LA Rams watch the waiver wire of other NFL teams?

Step four

Okay, now to wrap it all together. Signing an NFL free agent to a one-year prove-it deal works very well if the player is undervalued and outperforms his one-year contract. In short, the team wins by getting above-expectation production, and the player wins by positioning himself for a lucrative multi-year deal on their next contract.

But that seems like a loss to the original team, doesn’t it? Sure, they took the chance and ended up with a better-than-paid-for player, but off he goes. Ah, but that’s where compensatory picks come in. If you recall, they are calculated on players whose contracts expire. As long as the Rams sign up players who were released, that is.

So if the LA Rams sign solid players who have been released in 2021 to a one-year deal, and they play very well – well enough to attract a lucrative contract in 2022, the LA Rams will be in place to fit the conditions to be awarded valuable compensatory draft picks in 2023.

The Rams have begun to employ this strategy, thanks to the benefit of boosting player production by playing alongside Aaron Donald. Players like Cory Littleton and Dante Fowler Jr. became very rich after playing for the Rams. And the Rams have been able to convert outbound free agents into awarded compensatory 2021 NFL draft picks, and hope to do the same in 2022 and beyond. While they have certainly been freely willing to deal away their first-round picks, they do an admirable job of adding compensatory picks to help compensate for their trades.

The way the 2021 offseason is shaping up, the conditions are ripe for the Rams to take advantage of this.