The league year, and free agency, starts next Tuesday, March 13. The St. Louis Rams, like every other team in the league, will be looking to the market to fix holes and make changes to their roster. It will be especially important to the Rams who have a new coaching staff in place; new coaches mean new players. One problem: the NFL has not announced a cap number, according to Pro Football Talk.
The league and the players union are haggling over the final number, with an intention to increase it over the flat $120 million that was being projected for 2012.
Like every other business in America, benefit costs are eating into the money pool. An increase in the benefits portion of the cap this year would leave teams with less salary dollars to spend. The NFLPA does not like that fact, and the league, owners specifically, are more than willing to cooperate to have more money to spend.
And what about the Rams?
There are various numbers cited by various media members and others around the web that have the Rams with little cap space or swimming in money.
On Feb. 17, Rams COO Kevin Demoff told TST that the team had approximately $10 million in cap space, thanks in part to $3.7 million carried over from 2011 (carry over cap money was allowed in the new CBA).
That number could change depending on how the NFL and NFLPA resolve the cap number of 2012. It should go up if both sides figure out a way to push the cap number up for teams. It is impossible to say how much that number will rise. We should know sometime before Tuesday.