With Aaron Donald, Rams stuck between what's fair and prudentAlden Gonzalez
IRVINE, Calif. -- Aaron Donald's holdout is expected to reach its seventh day Friday, with no real end in sight. The game's greatest interior lineman is engaged in a high-stakes game with the Los Angeles Rams, who appear to find themselves somewhere in the space between doing what is sensible and doing what is right.
Donald is under team control for at least two more years, set to make a combined base salary of $8,694,250 in 2017 and '18. But he has performed to the level of the game's highest paid defensive players, a group earning nine-figure salaries on six-year contracts. And now he wants to be compensated accordingly.
Donald didn't show up for the Rams' three-week organized team activities this spring and has yet to arrive for training camp, absorbing $40,000-a-day fines to make his point. This could linger. The Rams previously extended gadget receiver Tavon Austin and edge rusher Robert Quinn before their fourth seasons, but those deals weren't consummated until about September. Ditto for Michael Brockers, the Rams nose tackle who signed his second contract heading into his fifth season. And Texans star J.J. Watt, the only one among the five highest-paid defensive players to sign his extension despite completing only three NFL seasons.
None of those players held out.
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