Wagoner: salary cap update

St. Louis Rams’ salary cap update

July, 20, 2014

By Nick Wagoner | ESPN.com

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/9711/st-louis-rams-salary-cap-update

With training camp set to begin in earnest this week, we take a look at where the St. Louis Rams stand in relation to the salary cap.

The team has all of its draft picks signed and a little (very little) wiggle room to make some additions should it want but it should be in good position to enter the season without having to make any sort of money-driven decisions to clear space.

All numbers below courtesy of ESPN Stats and Information and based on the current salary cap structure of taking the top 51 contracts on the roster.

Adjusted cap: $131,823,529

Team cap: $123,492,826

Dead money: $6,332,753

Cap space: $1,997,950

Thoughts: Usually, teams around the league work to keep around $2-3 million available under the cap in case of injuries, emergencies and to pay the practice squad. As it stands, the Rams have about enough for that but this doesn’t account for the two additional contracts that will land on the roster when the league starts counting the top 53 contracts. However, the bump there probably won’t be very much as players making a little more could get cut and the ones added likely won’t be making more than the minimum. Essentially, it will take some of the cap space but it will largely come out in a wash. If the Rams want to add a veteran somewhere, like at linebacker for example, they can still make it work on a minimum deal that wouldn’t push them over the top.

So while the Rams are pretty snug up against the cap, they should be just fine in terms of operating moving forward though those clinging to the (unrealistic) dream of acquiring an expensive wideout like Andre Johnson can plainly see there’s no way to make his deal work even if they wanted to.

Also worth noting here is that the Rams will not have the $3 million salary cap offset for cornerback Cortland Finnegan. Per the league, that $3 million credit will not be applied until the 2015 league year.