Robinson trade can help enable Donald extension

I sketched out a couple hypotheticals and the savings from trading Robinson could be used to jump start Donald's extension. For example, a $16M signing bonus as part of the overall deal can have $3.2M allocated to 2017 (they saved $3.3M in trading GR). According to OverTheCap.com they have $4.1M in 2017 cap space right now after trading GR and signing Everett, Kupp and Johnson. [overthecap.com]

Donald is also already on the books for $6.9M in 2018 so using Von Miller's deal as a template they could do the deal while only using an additional ~$15M of their 2018 cap space for Donald's extension (right now they have over $53M in 2018 cap space). The 'peak' year for his deal would probably be 2019 (where they currently have over $100M in cap space and much more could come from Quinn, Austin and/or Barron departing by then). Donald's cap numbers would go down somewhat from there for 2020-2022. And most of 2021 and virtually all of 2022 would not be guaranteed. The Rams would be locking in Donald through 2020 (age 29) and then he's year-to-year like anyone else.

And this is pure speculation, but just in case Goff comes through and is the Rams' guy long-term, they would want to kick in his extension in 2020. So to me that's yet another reason to extend Donald now. My guess is the deal is done sometime between the last couple days before camp begins and the final preseason game.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2017 04:45AM by LMU93.