Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald is coming off of a dominant season. He made his fourth straight Pro Bowl and was selected First-team All-Pro for a third consecutive year.
Despite this and the fact that Donald is entering the final year of his contract, Los Angeles general manager Les Snead stopped short of calling a contract extension the team’s top priority.
“I don’t know necessarily in terms of last or first, what I do know is, he’s an important domino,” Snead said per Myles Simmons of TheRams.com. “But the way we attack that list of names, can’t say that Aaron would be first. We’ll have them all going on simultaneously and try to knock them out. We’ve got a little bit of a general plan as it is now. We’ll come back and fine tune it.”
If Snead is making this his public stance, that’s one thing. But the reality is that Donald’s contract extension needs to be priority No. 1 in Los Angeles.
Not only is Donald arguably the best defender in the game and a pending free agent, but he’s less than a year removed from a contract holdout that extended into the regular season.
The Rams do have a number of pending free agents including Sammy Watkins (who’s expected to be franchised). But Donald will be 27 in May and is the league’s best defender at a position that can wreck an offensive game plan better than any other. The free agents can’t be neglected. But none of them should take precedence over making Donald happy.