I have said that I value AD very, very highly and want to hang onto him. I am very willing to pay a high price for him indeed.
But does that price have a limit? We have had many posts fretting about cap-killing contracts. Such posters would presumably ask someone like me, "OK, man, how far are you willing to go? Is there a limit? Could AD demand a price you wouldn't be willing to pay?"
Well, sure. There has to be a limit to what we really can afford. I don't know what that number might be because I don't follow that stuff. I simply concede in a general sense that there has to be a ceiling on what the Rams will pay. There has to be a point at which the dollar amount would hurt the team.
Having said that, here's what I don't get. I've seen so many posters apparently eager to set that ceiling. I've seen posts expressing reluctance to give him a big contract. Others dream of trades or question the value of a superlative DT. (Huh?) Yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't want to say much specifically here because I don't want to misrepresent what people have said or intend.
I respond to those perspectives with a recognition that they do express a valuing of the team over the individual player. That perspective has merit in a general sense.
The question I would, however, ask in return is this: when, under what conditions does that concern for the time make sense? Obviously, the answer depends on a player's value. It seems to me that the better the player and his value, the slower one should be to start expressing reluctance to meet his price because of salary caps and fantasies of trades.
And that's where I just really do not understand how so many loyal Ram fans can so quickly and with such apparent enthusiasm embrace judgments that Aaron Donald won't be worth the money. As I say, I am willing to make that judgment myself. But I would only consider it reluctantly, very late in the process, and with great sadness.
No one denies AD's talent. And he plays a position of great importance for which real talent is rare, surpassingly hard to replace. To me, he is a pearl of great price for the team--OUR GUY whom we drafted before the experts had him pegged. And on top of all of that, I have all that Ram fan scar tissue of the great talents we let get away over the years, from Hacksaw Reynolds to Kevin Greene to Jerome Bettis. Are we going to let ANOTHER one get away and hurt us?
Then there is the fact that we are not even at the decision point yet. There is time, as AD and his agent found out last year. The negotiation track that the Rams are on with AD is entirely rational and appropriate. We are NOT yet in any position to decide that his price is or will be too high. There is no reason that makes any sense to me to jump to negotiation Def Con 4 and start kvetching about cap-killing contracts and trade options.
Now, I do believe that it's generally desirable to be pro-active in re-signing authentic talents. I hope the team is able to re-negotiate AD this off-season. I want to lock that guy up forever, and I think we can do that more readily this summer than thereafter. I also figure we can trust the Rams not to kill their cap doing so. Given the years of team control remaining, they don't have to.
So, I look forward with hope to the prospect of securing AD in the fold. I think he is worth a very high price. I can't begin to fret over cap space until we're a long way down the road. And I will be heartbroken if the worst befalls us and we have to lose him. I personally am not interested in what I consider to be a speculative and premature embrace of calculations and possibilities for losing him.
