After acquiring Matthew Stafford in a trade last year, the Los Angeles Rams already had plans to sign him to an extension. He made that decision even easier after leading them to a Super Bowl win in his first season, which promptly led to a four-year, $160 million extension that he signed this month.

It’s a big contract for the Rams quarterback, but it could’ve been even larger had he been a free agent. The Rams know that, and Les Snead even said if he were on the market, Stafford probably could’ve named his price.

Sean McVay is thankful that Stafford worked with the Rams to ink a contract that benefits both parties, freeing up $9.5 million in cap space this year. He says Stafford has a “big-picture understanding” of how to keep the team as competitive as possible, allowing them to continue adding players to the roster.

“Anytime you’re able to solidify the quarterback position for years to come, especially when you’ve got a guy like Matthew, that’s big. And you can really see that,” McVay said, via ProFootballTalk. “I thought he did a great job working with our group. I think that says a lot about him where he did a great job working in coordination with our group to do a deal that [says], hey, he deserves all the credit. But I think he also has a big-picture understanding of, how can we structure this in a way that allows us to continue to surround him with good players? We’re very fortunate for that.”

Stafford is still being paid handsomely at $40 million per year, but he’s still not even in the top five among quarterbacks in annual salary. He only got $63 million fully guaranteed, too, according to Over the Cap. That’s only $1 million more than Ryan Tannehill got from Tennessee.

The Rams have $8.8 million in cap space right now, which they could use on Bobby Wagner and/or Odell Beckham Jr., but they wouldn’t have that sort of flexibility had Stafford not gotten his extension done.