Adam Schefter reports that Rams DT Aaron Donald will not report to training camp by Tuesday’s deadline to ensure that he gains an accrued season towards becoming an unrestricted free agent.
According to Schefter, Donald has no intention of ending his holdout any time soon.
This means that Donald will be a restricted free agent in 2018, as opposed to an unrestricted free agent. However, this won’t be a major issue, seeing as many believe the Rams will end up using their franchise tag on him to prevent another team from signing him to an offer sheet.
Rams HC Sean McVay said Monday that he doesn’t expect anything to chance in regards to Donald in the coming days.
“I don’t think anything’s going to change with that in the near future. I’ve had a little bit of dialogue with Aaron and we’re hopeful that we’ll get something done,” McVay said, per Gary Klein. “But I don’t think there’s any realistic deal to kind of that Aug. 7 being a date that changes really anything. But you never know. And things remain the same. I’m looking forward to trying to connect with him later today and we’ll see where we’re at.”
Donald, 26, is a former first-round pick of the Rams back in 2014. He was in the final year of his four-year, $10.136 million and set to make a base salary of $1,802,250 for the 2017 season when the Rams picked up his fifth-year team option for the 2018 season.
This will run the Rams around $6.892 million for the 2018 season, but is guaranteed only for injury and won’t prevent them from working on a long-term extension over the next year.
In 2017, Donald appeared in 14 games for the Rams and recorded 41 tackles, 11 sacks, a fumble recovery, five forced fumbles and a pass defense.
We have Donald featured in our Top 25 – 2019 NFL Free Agents list.
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