There were rumors this offseason that the Rams tried to trade Matthew Stafford, which doesn’t make a lot of sense considering the structure of his contract. His option bonus and 2024 salary became guaranteed this spring, locking in the veteran quarterback for $62 million.
Colin Cowherd of FOX Sports isn’t a reporter, but he shared a tidbit of information about Stafford’s contract on his show last week. Citing a source he trusts, Cowherd said the Rams wanted Stafford to rework his deal but he declined, which left the team “frustrated.”
“I was told by a source I trust that they wanted to redo his contract. He wasn’t interested. It limits what they can do and they were frustrated with him,” Cowherd said. “And I could also see them next year taking a quarterback because the way to catch up in this league with personnel is rookie quarterback, go buy four good players.”
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated was a guest on Cowherd’s show and he disputed the idea that the Rams were looking to trade Stafford. He said the Rams did “earmark this as a reset year,” which was exactly their plan when they traded Jalen Ramsey, Allen Robinson and cut both Bobby Wagner and Leonard Floyd.
Breer believes the Rams were just exploring their options and not actually shopping Stafford on the trade market.
“If you’re talking about shopping a guy, like, ‘We’re looking to offload him,’ that’s not what they were looking to do,” he said. “But they did earmark this as a reset year. And what I was told over and over again in February and March and when they traded Jalen Ramsey was, ‘We feel like if we don’t do this now, it’s gonna take two years, not one, for us to get out underneath all of the cap debt we’ve built up over the years building up the roster as aggressively as we have so we need to hit the reset button now.’ And when you’re going through the process of hitting the reset button, you explore everything. I think that’s more of what this was than anybody being shopped.”
The Rams have called this a remodel, not a rebuild. They feel they can still compete with the core of Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald intact, needing their younger players to step up and fill the voids left by key veteran starters.
Stafford was never going to get traded this offseason but the Rams probably realized how restricting his contract is, especially with $62 million becoming guaranteed this offseason. He has a cap hit of $20 million this year, but that spikes to $49.5 million in 2024 and 2026, and $50.5 million in 2025.
