Rams finally not “pushing all in” according to this chart

Going into next year, Les Snead may finally give a different meaning to the term “F them picks”.

The Los Angeles Rams have finally hit the reset button after many years of trading draft picks and spending large amounts of cap space on veteran star players. That strategy meant two things for the Rams: a) people would ridicule Snead’s decisions endlessly if L.A. didn’t win a Super Bowl because of it. And b) they did win the Super Bowl because of it.

But the L.A. Rams haven’t used a first round pick in the draft since moving up for Jared Goff in 2016 and they have rarely had any leftover cap space going into a season. That changes in 2023.

Though the Rams still have a below average amount of cap space, even after restructuring Cooper Kupp, they aren’t nearly as close to the red as some other teams. That will change a little after the whole draft class is signed, but the majority of L.A.’s cap spending is going to just three players and a whole lot of dead money for players no longer on the team. That’s shown in this chart by Jason Fitzgerald of OvertheCap.com, which is meant to exemplify “how much teams have riding on the 2023 season” alone:

The Rams are for once located in the “not much riding on this season” category and by being in the bottom right quadrant, that means that they are “likely going to be active in free agency or with early extensions in 2024” according to Fitzgerald.

But the Rams don’t have many players worthy of extensions yet. So L.A. is not likely to make any more financial additions until they can start extending players after finding out from the 2023 season if any of them should stick around for longer.

The L.A. Rams should have plenty of cap space and even their own draft selections in 2024. Then Snead can have a longer laster relationship with them picks than he’s used to.