Rampage
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- Mar 19, 2019
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With the 2021 salary cap officially set at, the Rams are one of several teams well over the limit of $182.5 million.
That means Los Angeles has a lot of work to do before the new league year begins at 1 p.m. PT on March 17.
Like all teams, the Rams have veterans who could restructure their contracts to add cap space and veterans who could be released. But General Manager Les Snead would rather take the former approach than the latter.
“We’ve had to knock on the door of a lot of our key figures, key pillars and ask them to in some cases make sacrifices, in some cases adjust their contract to help us get under the cap. The vision right now is to get to the finish line without having to release players,” Snead said during his Wednesday press conference. “With that being said, we’re well aware we’ve had to have some calls with a subset of our unrestricted free agents and restricted free agents and let them know our intent — whether we were going to be attempting to re-sign them or assuming they’e going to have a better market than what we would be able to pay and allowing them to know their path and how they need to move forward.”
Two players the Rams appear unlikely to retain in free agency are safety John Johnson and edge rusher Leonard Floyd.
Johnson will be one of the top safeties on the market, after registering 105 tackles, eight passes defensed, and an interception for Los Angeles in 2020 to finish his rookie contract. Floyd had a career year with 10.5 sacks, 11 tackles for loss, and 19 quarterback hits in 2020 playing alongside Aaron Donald on the Rams’ defensive front.