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dzrams
Here's something I haven't seen suggested: they don't have to sign Donald this year.
I'm not advocating them not signing him but it's not mandatory that it happen this year.
If they don't sign him to an extension this year, they can Franchise Tag him three times. He's one of those players where three times would be worth it.
That gives them '19 - '21 to work out a deal.
The message being, work hard and excel for the Rams and basically they won't extend you.
Last year the franchise tag for a DT was 13.3+ M.
Whatever it is this year it's not going to be a huge departure from that, and would therefore be grotesquely below what he would get with a fair and straight-up 2nd contract. Basically it's screwing over one of the best Rams defenders in decades, going back to the days of Deacon and Merlin. He led the league in pressures playing only 14 games. Only 3 DTs in the entire history of the NFL were pro bowlers in all 4 of their first 4 years---Greene, Olson, and Donald. And unlike them he was also 1st team all-pro 3 out of 4 years, which is more than Greene, who got that twice in his first 4 years. Defensive rookie of the year and then 2017 defensive player of the year. It doesn't say very much good about a team that would mistreat someone like that.
There is no free agent signing on the planet that would make up for the wrong message like that.
PLUS you want to pay him now and get big cap hits out of the way, because you do not want to work out a deal in 2019-21 both because he would cost even MORE by then, and 2020-21 are the years they have to pay Goff. The way qb contracts are going it will be around 30+ M a year for a starting qb's 2nd contract by then. They will want space for that, and signing Donald now means you pay him less than if he gets a contract later, and they can structure the cap hits so that he isn't costing them as much against the cap in his 3rd-4th years of the new contract that way (same thing they did with Quinn)...which means that a combined Donald/Goff cap hit will be less by then than if they do it your way.
Oh and when was the last time a player got franchised once or twice and after that they then signed them to a longterm deal. Cousins? Tru? I can't remember that approach working any time recently.
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Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2018 10:03PM by zn.
