Aaron Donald answered any looming questions about the possibility of him retiring this week when he signed a three-year deal with the Rams, ensuring he’ll be back in uniform this season. But his new contract isn’t the only one Los Angeles wants to get done this offseason.
Cooper Kupp is also due for a raise and the team is working on rewarding its star receiver for the job he did last season. Currently making $15.75 million per year, Kupp should crack $20 million annually on his revised contract.
General manager Les Snead shared an update on Kupp’s deal Tuesday during an interview on the Rich Eisen Show, and he says Kupp is next on the list. The goal is to get his deal done before training camp.
“Cooper Kupp, he is next on the list. You nailed that, for sure,” Snead said sarcastically to Eisen. “Our intention is to come to a win-win. We’d love to do it before camp. We’d love to do it sooner than possible. But in these types of situations when there’s an element of a player under contract, we feel like he deserves a raise, we want to get him an extension. But with that, there’s a lot of variables. There’s objective variables, there’s speculative variables, so sometimes it takes a little more time. It’s not a microwaveable situation to be creative and come up with a win-win for both Cooper and club so that Cooper can be rewarded, club can continue being successful in the moment and in the long term.”
Kupp has said multiple times that his goal isn’t to reset the wide receiver market or one-up the top players at his position. He even used the word “fair” when talking about finding a middle ground that rewards him and keeps the Rams competitive, like Snead said.
Fortunately, they have time to work something out, and his last contract didn’t get done until around the start of the 2020 season. So there isn’t much rush on this front, certainly not like there was with Donald flirting with retirement.
