Winning will be the Rams best fix for an extended Donald holdout

Aaron Donald was not at Los Angeles Rams practice Monday, all but assuring he will miss the season opener on Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts.

Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay must feel like a girlfriend scorned. His hot pursuit of defensive tackle Aaron Donald has yielded nothing to date. Now, less than a week out to the home opener against the Indianapolis Colts, hope is growing dim as this holdout appears on the verge of stretching into the regular season.

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Alden Gonzales at ESPN is reporting, as is most everyone else, that the Rams signature player was not at practice today. Beginning Sunday, Donald will begin to miss the first of 17 game checks.

A show of hands please for those who didn’t see this coming, and a few of those hands had best not belong to McVay, Rams GM Les Snead, or COO Kevin Demoff. LA’s new head coach gets a pass in that he has little to do with getting Donald into camp, save for his boundless and tireless pursuit of his likely best player.

So, what’s the best solution for Los Angeles moving forward, sans their star DT?

Win. Just win baby.

Nothing fixes and cures a bad day like winning. And if the Rams can go out and take care of their business without Donald on the field, fans will miss him less, and the powerful pendulum of leverage will swing back LA’s way.

If the game plan in the Donald camp is that a team needing to win doesn’t, then the Rams will be in trouble from a baseline of optics.

Related Story: Rams Announce Practice Squad

But win, and it changes the whole equation. McVay, Snead, and Demoff all know this.

So does Aaron Donald.