Turf Show Times
Mike Florio wants you to read PFT, so he’ll throw anything at the wall
If Les Snead gets a team to agree to trade for Cooper Kupp’s $20 million owed this year, it will be the highlight of his career as Rams general manager. But ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio isn’t concerned with realism if it allows him to write the headline, “Rams kick door open to potential Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp trades”.
Don’t worry, I read it so you don’t have to.
As to the possibility of trading Kupp or re-doing his deal, it was this: “[W]e hadn’t talked to him first so I wouldn’t do it here. Cooper and all these players that are at the end — macro level, we’re talking about a subset of players, not just Matthew and Cooper, that are coming to the end of their career and their contracts, they still have contracts with Rams. Do you keep going forward with that same contract? Do you restructure it in some way? For many reasons, those are all issues we really have to sit down and talk through. We haven’t done it yet.”
Even if you read that as Snead saying the team will trade Cooper Kupp if the right offer comes along, Florio makes sure to ignore the logistics of a deal so that he can make fans believe that there’s a chance it could happen.
By no means does it appear that a team will trade for the rights to pay a 32-year-old receiver $20 million when he just ranked 49th in receiving yards and has missed significant action in three straight seasons.
The Rams will either release Kupp or the receiver will agree to give money back so that he can stay on the team. Because players rarely give back money — even if Kupp doesn’t attract more on the open market, an “open market” at least implies that he could negotiate for more — there’s a 95% chance that Snead will just release Kupp before his $7.5 million roster bonus is due on March 19th.
He won’t pay him that roster bonus or his $12.5 million base salary.
That’s $20 million cash for a player who is more likely to make $10 million as a free agent, if he’s lucky.
If we look at some recent players of Kupp’s caliber and age, we find example after example of why NFL teams do not want 32-year-old receivers anymore — a trend I started writing about over three years ago.
The Texans traded for Diggs and re-did the $22 million he was owed so that it would be spread out over five years. Mistake! Diggs was 94th in receiving yards in 2024.
The Bears took on the last year of Allen’s four-year, $80 million contract and he delivered 744 yards, his lowest total since he was injured in 2016.
Has there even been a star...
