The salary cap is practically a myth to the Los Angeles Rams. Under Les Snead and Tony Pastoors, they’ve been masterful at manipulating the cap, whether it’s by adding void years to contracts or backloading deals to remain aggressive in the present.
They came into the year with plenty of cap space and they used it to not only add Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson, but now Myles Garrett, too.
The Rams are acquiring Garrett in a blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Browns, bringing aboard the two-time Defensive Player of the Year and his substantial contract. Fortunately, Los Angeles has the cap space to fit him in, doing so fairly comfortably, too.
That’s because the four-year, $160 million contract Garrett signed in 2025 is manageable for the next few years.
According to Michael Ginnitti of Spotrac, these are Garrett’s cap hits with the Rams.
Myles Garrett’s cap hits with Rams
Effectively, the Rams are taking on the remaining five years and $178 million on Garrett’s contract, which sounds like a lot. But it’s essentially a three-year, $98.8 million deal, allowing the Rams to get out of it after the 2028 season.
At around $33 million per year, Garrett ranks eighth in annual salary among edge rushers over the next three years, as pointed out by Sam Monson. That’s practically a bargain. It’s after 2028 that things get expensive.
As for Verse, his cap hit was set to be $4.1 million this year, but by trading him, the Rams will only be on the hook for $1.96 million in dead money, so it’s a savings of more than $2 million. That makes the acquisition of Garrett even more manageable, and it also frees up some space in 2027 and prevents the Rams from picking up Verse’s fifth-year option in 2028.
The Rams were projected to have more than $93 million in cap space in 2027, which will obviously decrease with Garrett on the roster now, but it’s still a substantial amount of spending money to have next year when they could push for another Super Bowl.
This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Salary cap impact of Rams’ Myles Garrett trade: Contract details, cap hits
Reporting by Cameron DaSilva, Rams Wire / Rams Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
