"I don’t understand how this s**t works" - NFL fans left scratching heads about salary cap after Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp sign extension with Rams
As we prepare to head into the new season, the Los Angeles Rams are officially the best team on paper in the NFL. They are great at a lot of things. They have a brilliant head coach in Sean McVay and future Hall of Fame talents on the defensive side of the ball in Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. Their offense is marshaled by the criminally underrated Matthew Stafford, who has a bevy of elite talent to call on, like superstar wide receiver Cooper Kupp.
But the one thing that they do better than anyone else is manipulate the salary cap. Since its introduction in 1994, no team has toyed with the salary cap rules more than the Rams' current front office. When it comes to making the numbers work, they display a level of magic only usually witnessed within the confines of Hogwarts.
NFL fans baffled by the Rams' ability to toy with the salary cap
Obviously, this upsets fans of other franchisees whose front offices are not as adept at cap calculations and appear to be working out the math on an abacus compared to the boys and girls in LA.
So naturally, to vent those frustrations, these fans took to Twitter to call foul play. One Twitter user had a suggestion on how they are managing to pay Donald, Kupp, et al:
@NFL @RamsNFL Their other 49 players must be working pro bono! Thought there was still a salary cap says every @AZCardinals fan.
#WillWork4Rings?
#Resentment?
To help provide an explanation, one Twitter user kindly provided "video footage of Rams GM Les Snead" discussing the matter:
#Rams GM Les Snead at every salary cap meeting https://t.co/E7cjtj2HBP
Another tweet described the cap philosophy employed by the current Super Bowl champs:
"So, there's this thing called the salary cap."
The Rams: https://t.co/hQmwYBYlXt
There was a lot of love for the salary cap manager in LA:
Whomever runs the Rams’ salary cap is cutting that bih up like Edward Scissorhands!! Ain’t no dang way they can have all the highest paid folks… Get ya bag fellas!! Y’all earned it, and slide some to the salary cap manager. They’re an accounting wizard! twitter.com/AdamSchefter/s…
There were also plenty of warnings about what was coming in the future for the LA-based franchise:
“How are the Rams doing this? The salary cap doesn’t exist.” They’re gong to pay for it in 2-3 years and go back to mediocrity.
How are the Rams managing to pay everyone?
No doubt they appear to be working the cap better than most, but they certainly have not been able to keep hold of everyone from last year. They have lost some high-profile names in Odell Beckham Jr. and Von Miller while restructuring some contracts to free up space.
For those concerned about the #Rams and the salary cap:
LAR uses a double bonus structure in almost every major contract. This spreads cap out immensely.
Cooper Kupp's $18.6M current cap hit is almost certainly going down.
Stafford: $23M->$13.5M
Donald: $26.75M-> $24M
Former Green Bay Packers VP Andrew Brandt provided the following detailed explanation of precisely what LA is doing:
Baked into the NFL salary cap is this loophole: For cap purposes, signing bonuses are prorated over the life of the contract. Although treated as cash in the year of negotiation, only the prorated amount is treated as cap each year. The mechanism creates short-term cap savings, with low early cap numbers that escalate later. It is a method of doing business that is very short-term oriented, but how L.A. has been operating for years.
this is a perfect way to understand how teams like the Rams are “avoiding” the salary cap
the cap isn’t fake…but it HAS A LOOPHOLE that allows for proration & void years (NBA & NHL do not allow)
highly recommend you spend 2 mins & learn from @AndrewBrandt on the @PatMcAfeeShow https://t.co/56Q48ODq2D
Will there be a day of reckoning for the Super Bowl champs? Possibly, but by then, they may have a few Super Bowl rings, so it is doubtful they will care.