One of the considerations that the L.A. Rams have to make with regards to having two first round picks is just how much it affects the team\u2019s salary cap. Despite a season in which the Rams own draft pick only falls at 29 because they reached the NFC Championship, L.A. has the 11th-most draft capital in the 2026 because they also have the Atlanta Falcons\u2019 13th pick.<\/p>\n
Conversely because they made the trade on the other side, the Falcons have to pay the least amount for their rookie class at $6.2 million.<\/p>\n
How much do Rams first round picks cost?<\/p>\n
Those contracts are fully-guaranteed and come with a fifth-year option.<\/p>\n
As you can tell by now, the $7.6 million for L.A.\u2019s two first round picks is basically half of all the money they must allocate for their rookie class in 2026.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to picture why the Rams would use both picks to trade up at this point because everyone believes that the Las Vegas Raiders are going to draft Fernando Mendoza, the only quarterback who most people think is worthy of an early pick this year, but a top-5 pick would cost over $45 million total and over $8 million in year 1. That\u2019s more than the combined value of both of the Rams first round picks.<\/p>\n
However, if the Rams get an offer to trade their first round pick for one in 2027 like they did with the Falcons in 2025, then they\u2019d be saving that money this year and pushing their financial commitments back again.<\/p>\n
That might not be a bad idea. It\u2019s just a matter of how much they love the prospects who are available and how badly another team wants to move up, similar to the surprise of the Falcons falling for James Pearce at pick 26.<\/p>\n
A decision that they surely regret now.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about value, not just pick numbers<\/p>\n
The focus of the draft is always on \u201cwhat picks do you have and who are the prospects?\u201d but sometimes it\u2019s just as much about \u201chow much do those players cost?\u201d Oftentimes those players are not going to be worth it, other times they\u2019re extraordinary values, and that\u2019s the question we should be more interested in than anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the considerations that the L.A. Rams have to make with regards to having two first round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,2619,7357,2444,2611,6,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-775766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-rams","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-los-angeles","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-los-angeles-rams-draft","12":"tag-los-angeles-rams-salary-cap","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-losangelesrams","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-rams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}