The moves the Los Angeles Rams have made in the 2024 offseason all have one word in common: aggressive. They've signed numerous outside free agents for the first time in several years, they threw around significant draft capital in the 2024 NFL Draft, and made it a point to lock up several key in-house free agents.
Their aggressiveness feels like a stark departure from the plan they seemed to enact ahead of the 2023 season, which was sit back, rebuild the team using cheap rookie deals, and rely on the veterans on their roster to help develop the youth so they could move on from the bloated, expensive contract they handed out in years prior. Indeed, that strategy worked. The Rams made 14(!) draft picks in 2023 and have the least amount of dead cap in the NFL. And yet...
The Rams reneged on their 2023 strategy
And yet, the Rams flipped from that strategy in 2024. They handed out contracts worth well over $100M in free agency, between Jonah Jackson, Darious Williams, and Colby Parkinson alone the Rams handed out $96M in total value.
The Rams are notorious for their rather casual association with draft picks. Rams general manager Les Snead's "F* them picks" strategy led to two Super Bowl appearances and one ring from 2018 to 2021. Despite this, the Rams only moved up once in the entire 2023 draft. Indeed, they moved back twice in the third round and twice in the fifth, with their lone move up at the end of the sixth round. They have since said that they "tried" and "thought about" moving into round one last year but conversations never went anywhere.
This year, in the 2024 NFL Draft, the Rams flipped that strategy. In a new show the NFL released titled "NFL Draft: The Pick Is In". The Rams tried to trade up not once, not twice, but three times in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. The Rams offered the New York Jets their first and second-round picks, 19 and 52, to move up to the 10th overall pick. The Jets declined, opting to swap back to 11th with the Minnesota Vikings.
The Rams upped the ante, offering the Jets 19, 52, AND one of their two third-round picks plus a sixth-round pick for the 11th overall pick. According to the Fitzgerald-Spielberger trade value chart, that package is equivalent in total value to the number-one overall pick. To say that it's a significant offer is, quite frankly, understating it and drawing into question the judgment of the Jets' front office for rejecting it.
Just after, the Rams offered a similar package to the Indianapolis Colts for the 15th overall pick, offering 19, 99, and a fifth-round pick. The Colts declined and the Rams stayed put at 19th overall, selecting Florida State pass rusher Jared Verse.
Less than 24 hours after these trades fell through, the Rams sent another trade offer in the second round. In a move that was labeled as the most expensive overpay of the last several years, the Rams moved up from 52 to 39 by sending their fifth-round pick in 2024 and second-round pick in 2025. They did this to secure Florida State defensive tackle Braden Fiske.
The Rams didn't move back once in the entire 2024 Draft. They completely flipped the script on their approach to the 2024 draft from the 2023 draft.
Coincidental contracts
Their radical shift didn't just occur in their draft process, however. Look at their deals in free agency. Darious Williams, Jonah Jackson, and Tre'Davious White are all essentially on one-year deals, White a true one-year deal, Williams and Jackson on pseudo-one-year deals with their guaranteed money.
Outside of Kevin Dotson's (who had plenty of leverage), all of these deals are effectively one-year deals or have guarantees so low they might as well be. It seems to me that all of these deals were crafted to secure the players for at least 2024, with the ability to move on if things went poorly.
The end of the 2024 season also brings Joe Noteboom's contract off the books and provides an opportunity to get out of Tyler Higbee and Rob Havenstein's contracts.
If the Rams do move on from them, the only mega deals left on the Rams' salary cap would be Cooper Kupp's, Kevin Dotson's (both of which run out of guarantees after the 2025 season)....and Matthew Stafford's.
The biggest coup de grace, in my opinion, is in Matthew Stafford's contract decision. Stafford reportedly wants reassurances that the Rams won't move on from him after this season. His 2024 salary is fully guaranteed, but he has no guaranteed money left for the remainder of his contract. The obvious answer, one that I thought would have happened right away given their stance of last year and previous years, was that he'd get a new deal fairly quickly. It has been two months and so far, no dice.
To me, this signals the Rams are thinking about their future beyond 2024. Paying him only for him to get hurt makes a bad situation already worse. Locking up any money for him in the future might take away their future if something goes wrong. The Rams didn't make any attempts at hiding their desire for a rookie quarterback in the 2024 draft, and they might be tempted to look again in the 2025 draft.
The reason the Rams signed Jimmy Garoppolo was to keep the offense afloat, if not humming if Stafford missed time. They could have stuck with Stetson Bennett or a rookie behind Stafford, but chose to bring in a capable vet who could steer the ship if Stafford was hurt. This was done likely to keep the team in contention for as long as possible.
Stafford's deal running out of guaranteed money the same year the Rams have all of these deals running out feels too coincidental to be an accident.
Full steam ahead for 2024
Why though? What was the process behind these decisions?
It is my own opinion, that the Rams might consider 2024 their "all-in" season.
If the Rams felt content to ride out the rest of Stafford's deal, maximizing their window with him through restructures and a new deal, as well as surrounding him with cheap talent through the draft, felt like the safe and obvious choice. It's a choice they haven't made yet.
Why suddenly become so aggressive and depart from the plan that had been working? Why stay so mum on Stafford's future?
All of these moves and sudden departures point to something changing in their front office. I doubt it's entirely driven by Aaron Donald's retirement, though that might have pushed their window up. Stafford is the engine that makes the whole team go, and the Rams know it. I suspect it is his deal that is the impetus behind this change.
This could end up aging incredibly poorly. Nothing is stopping the Rams and Stafford from getting a deal done in training camp and all of this winds up being a total coincidence. Their draft strategy could have entirely reflected how they felt about the 2024 class, and they'll go back to their prior strategy in a much more talented class in 2025.
I don't quite believe that, however. Retaining all of their key in-house free agents, even promoting Chris Shula to DC as their first-ever in-house coordinator hire, feels like moves made to keep as much stability from their 2023 season to go full steam all in for 2024.
There are too many signs that the Rams are gearing up to push their chips in for 2024 and see where they fall. Time will tell where the team ends up beyond that, but this could be a very different team in 2025 and 2026.
