It’s been pretty much business as usual for Les Snead during this Rams offseason. Negotiating a refreshed deal for quarterback Matthew Stafford and acknowledging that Cooper Kupp will probably have to be traded are examples of situations that have become almost routine for the general manager.
Last year there was the Stafford contract drama, which lasted a lot longer than this year’s version, as well as the process of replacing Aaron Donald (and, given that rookie pass rusher Jared Verse was AP’s NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year last year, that seemed to work out all right.) Before that, there was Donald deciding if he’d come back and play another year (he did), or Sean McVay pondering the idea of stepping away because of the stress (obviously, he didn’t).
In-season or offseason, there is seldom a dull moment for an NFL general manager, especially one working for an ambitious owner in Stan Kroenke and working in the country’s second-largest market, where there is still a fan base to rebuild and success is expected if not required.
(I mean, this isn’t New York.)
“Each year is different,” Snead said during a Zoom session with local media Wednesday. “I call it the dark matter of sports teams. It’s not Madden.
“The whole key is trying to engineer team competence. The team’s made up of individuals. But you know some individuals are going through really tough things personally. And that might be during the course of a month during the season that no one really knows. … We don’t always come to work and make an ‘A’ that day. But OK, is a ‘C+’ all you can give that day? That’s all. I mean, such is life.”
Snead has been the Rams’ general manager since 2012, when the team was still in St. Louis. The parameters were different in mid-America; the Rams brought the Lombardi Trophy to St. Louis after the 1999 season, but finished their tenure there with 12 straight losing seasons. And when Kroenke moved the team back to Los Angeles in 2016 and committed to building what would become SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the task was clear: This is L.A., you have to develop a clientele, and to do so you’d better win.
They have. They were 4-12 in their first season back in the Coliseum under Jeff Fisher. McVay was hired in 2017, and since then the Rams are 80-52, have won 10 or more games six times, have won four division titles and reached the postseason six times, and won a Super Bowl on SoFi turf to conclude the 2021 season.
The MVP of that Super Bowl was Kupp, completing a season in which he was AP’s offensive player of the year and led the league in receptions, yards and touchdown catches, football’s version of the Triple Crown. Three offseasons later, Kupp recently acknowledged on social media that the Rams are seeking to trade him, and it has a lot to do with that salary cap, which will be $279.2 million in 2025.
At this moment, according to Spotrac.com, the Rams’ cap figure stands at $230,328,038, and have we said that football rosters can be expensive? That figure doesn’t even include the three-year, $57 million deal given to offensive tackle Alaric Jackson last week, with $35 million guaranteed.
According to Spotrac, Kupp’s cap hit is $29.78 million. He’s 32. The heir apparent, Puka Nacua, is 25 and carries a cap hit of $1,091,244 at the moment.
Tough decisions are part of the GM’s job in any sport with a hard cap. In this case, at least, there is some collaboration between team and player – again, not routine, but maybe Snead felt the team owed him that much.
“We sat down with Cooper and said this was definitely something we were going to look into, based on over the course of the year, especially there at the trade deadline, where people were knocking on the door seeing if we were willing to trade him,” Snead said.
Is there a scenario where Kupp returns to the Rams? Snead didn’t shut the door, but it seems to be ajar only slightly.
“I don’t want to tell you no today and then next week he’s a Ram.” he said. “But you see what we’re trying to do. We’re working to try to find a partner and a next chapter for Cooper and ourselves.”
It’s a fact of life in the NFL – and the line that the acronym stands for Not For Long is a joke with a lot of truth to it. Age matters. The cap number matters. And in a violent sport where the average career span is just north of three seasons, health matters.
I asked Snead if he ever envied somebody like the Dodgers’ Andrew Friedman, who can (and has) gathered talent unfettered by a salary cap.
“You know, I’ve never been envious of Andrew,” he said. “I’ve only been impressed anytime I’ve gotten the chance to hear him, listen to him. Obviously, a brilliant person. And what they’ve done there, that’s their reality, and I think they’ve definitely made the most of their reality, or at least they come close to making the most of it every year. So it’s a different sport, different parameters, but only thoroughly impressed with how they run that operation over there.”
Can an executive in one sport get ideas from those in other sports? Snead says he does talk with his peers in other leagues but “probably not enough,” he said. One man’s season is another’s offseason with maybe even a larger workload.
“There’s rarely that time when we’re all just hanging out at the beach,” he said.
But, he added, “It’s always really, really cool to see how other people do it, (with) the parameters and reality they’re working with … Anytime I do that, when (I) get a chance, there’s a nugget I write down and go, ‘You know what, let’s try to implement that with the Rams.’”
Wouldn’t you love to see those notes?
jalexander@scng.com