Aaron Donald holdout stretching through Week 1

The Los Angeles Rams will be without All-Pro defensive tackle Aaron Donald in their season opener, as he continues his holdout.

The Los Angeles Rams are opening up their season on Sunday afternoon against the Indianapolis Colts, and each side will be missing its best player. The Colts will be without Andrew Luck, who is continuing to recover from offseason shoulder surgery. Meanwhile, the Rams will be sans Aaron Donald, who has decided to dig in while waiting for a new contract.

Teams typically don’t like to re-negotiate at any point of a deal, especially a rookie contract. Rookie deals are cheap for good-to-great players thanks to the wage scale, something the players wanted to be installed, and ultimately was installed, a decade ago. The idea was that more money would be given to veteran players, which has worked.

However, Donald isn’t happy with the system. The fourth-year man out of the University of Pittsburgh has amassed three Pro Bowl trips and two First-Team All-Pro seasons, all while totaling 28 sacks and four forced fumbles.

Donald is signed through this year and next, assuming Los Angeles picks up his option. If he were to play out the deal, Donald would be in line to make roughly $10 million. If Donald continues to hold out and the Rams finally cave, there’s a very good chance he ends up getting north of $110 million with more than half in guarantees, eclipsing the numbers sets by Ndamukong Suh (six years, $114 million, $59M guaranteed) for a defensive tackle back in 2015.

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Donald is arguably the best defensive lineman in the game. Los Angeles will need to pay him at one point or another, and considering only a few teams have more cap space than the Rams, now wouldn’t be a horrible time.

Should they continue to wait, the price is likely to continue trending upward with Donald’s maturation and an inflating cap.