[CanuckRightWinger]

Some questions:
What percentage of Los Ramos Salary Cap will $25 Mil per year represent?

How much will that HUGE amount of annual Aaron Donald Cost affect Snead's ability to sign other quality starters and depth to Los Ramos in future seasons?

What signal does it sent to Goff's Agent, Marcus Peters' Agent, Saffold's Agent, Havenstein's Agent, etc etc etc if we cave to this Agent Todd MyMotherWasATeamster! French who called the Rams Offer of $21,000,000.00 USD per year to Aaron Donald "insulting"?

Let some other team bankrupt their Salary Cap on ONE GUY who patrols between the opposing OG and Center. Save Los Ramos Salary Cap dollars for guys like Gurley, Goff, Cooks, ....ie. guys who handle the ball, and move the ball over great swaths of yardage and into the End Zone.
ME: Guys who score, should get more.

Moreover, Aaron Donald has not single-handedly transformed Los Ramos D into the 1985 Bears, nor the 2000 Ravens. On the contrary, when Michael Brockers went down in our Home Playoff game versus Atlanta last January, the Falcons ran through Aaron Donald and the rest of our D, like crap through a goose!!

WE NOT ME....if it is meant to be REAL, and not some empty motivational BS-line, then Aaron Donald is exhibiting ME traits BIG TIME.

Cave to Todd French now and the other critically important future McSnead re-signings necessary to start (& perpetuate) a "Rams Dynasty" ie. Goff, Peters, Havenstein, Saffold, Joyner et al will be ever increasingly difficult to complete reasonably.

Send a signal to the vulture Todd French and his ilk.....this present Rams Regime will do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY TO IMPROVE THE TEAM! ....including moving on from Aaron Donald!

[/zn/]

Lol at 25 million being reasonable. If the cap were 200 million? Maybe. But it’s not. Yet, anyway.

21 M and 25 M are just the polar opposites in a negotiation. 21 M is too low though. I don't see either Mack or Donald signing for that. It;s roughly about 13% off of where it ought to be if other 2nd contracts are any kind of guide. 25M is too high but only by about 1 M or about 4% off. This just keeps looking like it's going to end up at 23-24 M.

[/zn/]

Some questions:
What percentage of Los Ramos Salary Cap will $25 Mil per year represent?

How much will that HUGE amount of annual Aaron Donald Cost affect Snead's ability to sign other quality starters and depth to Los Ramos in future seasons?

Well, fair questions. In terms of AD's numbers though it's more likely going to be around 23-24 M.

According to a study that was posted here and other places, teams spend around 60% of their cap on a core group of key players. That's normal. With Goff, Gurley, Cooks, Donald, and maybe Peters that will be about 100 M. But this has to be calculated against the 2021 cap (that's when Goff has to be signed). The 2021 cap will be around 220 M if the normal increases hold. 60% of that is 132 M. So that leaves 32 M to finish off the rest of the 60%. That's somewhere around 3 additional players.

The immediate effect is that I doubt they can sign Joyner. I like Joyner (a lot ) but that's okay...if this regime has shown it can do anything especially well, it's find DBs. There's a long list of them from 2012 on, and it includes draft picks, trades, UDFAs, and castoffs they coached up (Hill). (And not a single first round pick among them.) So I am not worried about them replacing Joyner.

For me the key to having Donald is that elite DTs who can pass rush at his rate are very rare, and I mean rare in all NFL history. It's easier to find outside rushers than pass rushing DTs, let alone ELITE DTs. For example last year, out of 35 pass rushers with 8 sacks or more, only 3 were DTs. So you can then add an outside rush to having Donald, while the odds are against doing it the other way around (ie, having a top outside rusher and adding a great inside rusher). Considering that last year they got 21 sacks from the OLBs WITHOUT a good pass rusher among them, imagine what they will be like after adding a good one. (Though Ebukam was a rookie and maybe he becomes a good one.)

So if you're going to build in a core of key players who represent your topic contracts and team continuity, I include Donald in that bunch. He can't make a defense good on his own but you can build a good one around him.

In terms of the rest, by 2021 they will have 3 more draft classes, and 3 more groups of UDFAs and budget signings (like Blythe) and other team's coachable cast-offs (like Hill). You only fear having to put 60% of your cap into 8 guys if your personnel acquisition history is a bad one, and with the Rams it's a good one.

[69RamFan]

21 M and 25 M are just the polar opposites in a negotiation. 21 M is too low though. I don't see either Mack or Donald signing for that. It;s roughly about 13% off of where it ought to be if other 2nd contracts are any kind of guide. 25M is too high but only by about 1 M or about 4% off. This just keeps looking like it's going to end up at 23-24 M.

On your earlier post,,,
You made a comparison, with JJ Watts and Von Miller,,,
There salaries are compared to their position they play in...

Aaron Donald position was DT moved to a DE but still a 3 technique, so why did you leave out Fletcher Cox at 17mil/yr... if you use his number, then 21mil would more than 10%
and the same goes for JJ Watts salary is at 16.6mil/yr... so either position at 21mil/yr is about the right amount...

[/zn/]

On your earlier post,,,
You made a comparison, with JJ Watts and Von Miller,,,
There salaries are compared to their position they play in...

Aaron Donald position was DT moved to a DE but still a 3 technique, so why did you leave out Fletcher Cox at 17mil/yr... if you use his number, then 21mil would more than 10%
and the same goes for JJ Watts salary is at 16.6mil/yr... so either position at 21mil/yr is about the right amount...

First off that's not how the Rams are approaching it. They are paying Donald as a top defender in the league. And they said as much. The last relevant contract for that is Von Miller in 2016.

They did the same thing with Gurley. They did not pay him in keeping with 2nd contracts for RBs. Leaving Bell's tag out of it, the nearest contract on that list is 8 M. Gurley is nearly twice that. That's because they're paying him more as a hybrid 230 lb. RB/pass catching weapon. That's not an official position either, but just as they said they would pay Donald as the top defender in the league, they have an unofficial category for Gurley too. One which will eventually include other guys like Bell, Johnson, and Elliott.

Second the amounts for 2nd contracts go up annually with the cap. You have to figure time into it. It's not just VM at 19 M, it's VM at 19 M in 2016.

I left out Cox because he's the top of the DT list and not the top of the best defender in the league list, where both Mack and Donald belong. Cox is just not in AD's class. If they tried to make a deal for Donald along those lines it would be way under what he's worth.

I like how Suh put it:

Rich Hammond@Rich_Hammond
Ndamukong Suh said he’s looking forward to playing with Aaron Donald but hasn’t talked contracts with him. Suh: “He deserves more than I got, so I’ll leave it at that.” Suh signed for 6 years and $114 million with Miami in 2015.

[69RamFan]

First off that's not how the Rams are approaching it. They are paying Donald as a top defender in the league. And they said as much. The last relevant contract for that is Von Miller in 2016.

They did the same thing with Gurley. They did not pay him in keeping with 2nd contracts for RBs. Leaving Bell's tag out of it, the nearest contract on that list is 8 M. Gurley is nearly twice that. That's because they're paying him more as a hybrid 230 lb. RB/pass catching weapon. That's not an official position either, but just as they said they would pay Donald as the top defender in the league, they have an unofficial category for Gurley too. One which will eventually include other guys like Bell, Johnson, and Elliott.

Second the amounts for 2nd contracts go up annually with the cap. You have to figure time into it. It's not just VM at 19 M, it's VM at 19 M in 2016.

I left out Cox because he's the top of the DT list and not the top of the best defender in the league list, where both Mack and Donald belong. Cox is just not in AD's class. If they tried to make a deal for Donald along those lines it would be way under what he's worth.

I like how Suh put it:

Rich Hammond@Rich_Hammond
Ndamukong Suh said he’s looking forward to playing with Aaron Donald but hasn’t talked contracts with him. Suh: “He deserves more than I got, so I’ll leave it at that.” Suh signed for 6 years and $114 million with Miami in 2015.

I understand what you're trying to say,,,
I think it comes down to guarantee money....
That's what is most important in my book....
I'm looking what Gurley got,,, and I'm sure they made a very good offer just comparing to what Gurley got....
But I think AD's Agent is asking for the world... so that's the hold up IMO...

[/zn/]

I understand what you're trying to say,,,
I think it comes down to guarantee money....
That's what is most important in my book....
I'm looking what Gurley got,,, and I'm sure they made a very good offer just comparing to what Gurley got....
But I think AD's Agent is asking for the world... so that's the hold up IMO...

If you mean he's asking for the world in guaranteed money, I dunno. I bet it's around 80 M and that sounds fine to me, for who he is.

In terms of generally slotting a contract for the sake of discussion, though, the yearly average gives you a much quicker insight into where a deal stands in relation to others. Cooks got 5 years with 50+ M guaranteed and Watkins got 3 years with 30 M guaranteed. There's lots you can say about the differences there, but in terms of annual slotting of 2nd contracts, they're both within the 2018 range for WRs: SW got 16 M, BC got 16.2 M. So the annual amount gives you the range of where different positions are getting slotted every year.

Given all that I don't think 25 M is asking for the world, and I do think 21 M is too low. As I said 21 M would make that the only 2nd contract for any given category that went up only 5% a year. At a minimum at every other position it's a 10% increase a year and usually it's more. (As I said if you assume a 12% annual increase over Miller's deal that comes out to about 24 M.) And there's no good reason to be that far behind the annual increase at every other position. It's not a defensible view. "Hey Rams every other category goes up more across time so why do you have only a 5% annual increase over Von Miller's 2016 deal?" "Cause...Aaron's short, with a beard." IE....there's no good reason for it.

So I think the Rams are holding things up by offering a deal that falls short.

At the same time you can bridge the difference between 21 M and 25 M. This is a tough negotiation but not impossible.

....

[/zn/]

Um... you know how the Rams are approaching it... how?

Because that's how they discuss it. They never discuss it in terms of the DT market. They talk about highest paid DEFENDER. Plus it matches what they did with Gurley, whose deal broad jumps the entire RB market and fits all the discussion that was going on about how players like Bell and TG should not be bound by the RB market.

Quotes first, then links below, numbered. I picked a few recent examples but this kind of talk goes all the way back to the 2017 off-season.

Demoff: "We look forward to getting this done. And putting Aaron in the place where he should be among the highest-paid defensive players."

Rams COO Kevin Demoff was a little bit more explicit in his thoughts. "Aaron deserves to be paid among the elite players in our game"

Snead casually acknowledged that Donald is poised to supersede new teammate Ndamukong Suh as the game's highest-paid defender.

Snead: Suh is "well aware that" he will line up next to "someone who is on the verge of being the highest-paid defensive player in football"

1. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300000 ... been-great

2. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/rams ... -our-game/

3. http://www.theredzone.org/Blog-Descript ... d-defender

4. http://www.theredzone.org/Blog-Descript ... d-defender

[/zn/]

That's how they discuss it... *publicly*.

So now you know what they say privately?

And everyone does that? GMs all over the league say things like "we will make Brandin Cooks the highest paid offensive player in the league" when they really mean "he will get what receivers get for 2nd contracts in 2018"?

And what would be the point of that particular type of doublespeak?

From the start of all this Snead and Demoff categorized Donald as getting paid as the top defender in the league. Mack's deal will follow the same basic logic.

Even Bonsignore approaches it that way. Donald's category is best defensive player, not DT.

While it’s a given Donald will reset the market for defensive players, there hasn’t been a top-end deal done on that side of the ball since Von Miller’s 2016 contract with the Broncos. That means dynamics like total value of the contract and immediate and full guarantees – the guide posts and trail markers teams and agents typically follow to bridge one record-breaking deal to the next – are a bit outdated. Setting and agreeing to new ones adds to the difficulty.

Some more.

Gonzalez:

In the salary-cap world, 20 months is an eternity. That's the amount of time that has passed since the NFL's highest-paid defensive player, Denver Broncos outside linebacker Von Miller, signed on the dotted line. It's enough time for Miller's contract to almost be considered obsolete as a potential comparison for Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, the man who is expected to eventually surpass Miller with his own extension.

Benoit

If Donald becomes history’s highest-paid defensive player, he’d almost surely get around $70 million over the first three years

Over the cap.com

With a generational talent such as Donald, merely looking at the top defensive tackle contracts doesn’t by itself provide you with the information necessary to reach a deal. In this case, Donald’s proper comps are the deals for the top defensive lineman, with the inclusion of the league’s highest paid non-lineman defensive player (Von Miller) as well, since we’re talking about potentially the league’s best player in Donald.

Gonzalez and Graziano

Donald...can at least make a case for being the game's highest-paid defensive player.

....

[snackdaddy]

I'm a little curious as to how everyone feels about all of this. Maybe someone should start a poll. Who's in favor of paying Donald top tier QB money 25 mil plus? Who feels they should stick to their guns with a 21-22 million offer?