For weeks, the critically flawed quarterbacks-class crown jewels of the 2016 NFL draft presented the league with a pressing question about how to fix a massive mistake. While the Philadelphia Eagles contemplated the future of Carson Wentz and the Los Angeles Rams contemplated exchanging Jared Goff, on-watching NFL teams contemplated an issue that spanned both franchises.
Certainly you power find a trading partner who is willing to reboot the careers of Goff or Wentz, but what could convince a trading partner to eat the significant amount of salary each owes?
Well, the Rams just laid the blueprint. And for the second time since 2017, the league has what amounts to an NBA-style trade sweetener in exchange for eating up a player’s massive salary. That’s one of the fundamental underpinnings of Saturday night’s stunning trade deal that will reportedly send Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford to the Rams in exchange for Goff and three valuable draft picks – including first-round picks in the 2022 and 2023 drafts. and a third-round pick in this year’s draft. In terms of value alone, the trio of picks represent significantly more than most thought the forthcoming 33-year-old Stafford would earn in a deal. The kicker was the Rams’ take-up of Goff, including $ 43 million in guaranteed money to be paid to him over the seasons 2021 and 2022. It was that salary guarantee that put the Rams in a position to sweeten their deal for Stafford.
So what is $ 43 million in guaranteed monetary value absorbing? Multiple sources in the league buzzing about the deal until the early morning hours on Sunday said the Rams’ inclusion of a first-round runner-up was likely pushing LA over the Washington Football Team for Stafford.
If that sounds a bit like an NBA team selling a toxic salary with a draft choice, it’s because it is exactly what it is. And this is the second time the NFL has seen it happen since 2017. The other was the Houston Texans who tied a second and sixth round draft pick to Brock Osweiler, and sent that package to the Cleveland Browns for a conditional fourth-round. choice . The catch in there was that the Browns used their generous salary cap to eat Osweiler’s $ 16 million in guaranteed salary, which the franchise eventually did before Osweiler was released before the 2017 season got underway.
It’s highly unlikely the Lions will take such a move with Goff, who was the toast of Los Angeles and was considered a budding MVP candidate entering the 2019 season after a 2018 campaign throwing 32 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, along with 4,638 passing yards. What the Rams got instead was a player who was severely constrained by an offensive line falling apart, leading head coach Sean McVay into the early stages of a frustrating belief that Goff’s limitations could never outgrow him that the coach in fact every part should micromanage the transient violation.
That 2019 season, the Rams began painting a tricky corner with Goff, who had just signed a massive four-year contract extension, $ 134 million, just before the season. It was a deal that seemed to make Goff unmanageable or inexorable until after the 2022 season. Of course, that was an ideology that didn’t take into account the Rams’ wide open nature with some of their talent base, including absorbing some significant cap hits while discharging talent. It also ignored the team’s aggressive use of first-round draft picks to make the necessary change.
Still, few in the league believed that a trade worshiper could be found who would take on a terrible contract after watching Goff struggle through the 2020 season. Many saw the Rams’ problems as similar to those of the Eagles. and Wentz, with the team stuck on a landslide of guaranteed money that other franchises wouldn’t want to import, especially at the expense of provisional assets. What no one in the league seemed to consider was the possibility of reversing the typical mechanics of a trade, with the Eagles or Rams sending their quarterback and his contract out of town with a few preliminary choices to negotiate an agreement. bring.
It was annoying enough that the Eagles didn’t even think about it. Instead, the team fired its head coach Doug Pederson and leaned for a reboot of Wentz under a new coaching staff and on behalf of team owner Jeffrey Lurie. The Rams went the other way. That made sense, given that the franchise would never have sacrificed McVay for Goff in the same way that the Eagles Pink-slip Pederson did to get a Wentz plan back on track. Instead, the Rams gave the league the blueprint on Saturday night to blow up even the most annoying contracts. Something like “attach a pickaxe to it”.
Like the Browns in 2017, it should give the NFL something to chew as the league has always internally disapproved of NBA machinations such as auctioning off draft picks to create cap space or simply ditching the commitment to big contracts . While considered creative in some quarters, the NFL’s problem with the maneuver is that it could tilt the playing field toward franchise owners willing to “ buy ” choices for capspace.
The difference in this case is that Stafford and Goff the Rams and Lions provide adequate coverage in this case. Not only was Stafford a good enough to command a price that may have been higher than some suspected, Goff is still so talented that a reboot of his career seems perfectly possible in Detroit, perhaps even to the point that the money guaranteed. it will be justifiably paid through 2022. It is possible that everyone will walk away from this deal feeling good about the commodity.
In all fairness, the NFL might be a better place for it too. If we’ve learned anything in 2020, it’s that some teams are making huge quarterback deals that they end up regretting. And the competition is better off with teams aggressively looking for ways to be the best product on the field they can be. If a team like the Eagles wants to hold on to a deal that doesn’t look that great and is trying to revive and justify a player, it is. But the Rams showed that it doesn’t have to be that way. As it turns out, practically anything can be remedied if a team is willing to spend its way out with cash or bills of exchange.
Including a contract that didn’t seem negotiable until a few weeks ago.
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