Aaron Donald is the best defensive player in football. There is no debating this. No pass rusher is capable of taking over a game quite like Donald can. Not Khalil Mack. Not Von Miller. And not J.J. Watt — at least not anymore.

Re-signing Donald to a contract extension should be a no-brainer for the Rams, right? They have a generational talent who rants to remain in Los Angeles for the rest of his career. You don’t just give that up, regardless of the price.

But here we are. Nearly a week into training camp and Donald remains a no-show, holding out for a contract extension that will make him the highest-paid defensive player in league history. Reports suggest the Rams are offering about $20 million per year, while Donald’s camp is looking for top-shelf quarterback money. The team hasn’t budged, and now we’re stuck in a game of contract chicken.

August 7 is a significant date for both sides. That’s when Donald must appear if he wants to accrue another season and hit unrestricted free agency next March. Donald’s team doesn’t see it that way, reportedly. With the franchise tag as a looming option for the Rams, there is little chance Donald makes it to unrestricted free agency regardless of his report date. This won’t end any time soon.

So what should the Rams do?

The team has plenty of options. Paying Donald is the one most fans are clamoring for. That doesn’t make it the most sensible option, though. In fact, it might be the least logical decision the Rams could make.

Sure, Donald is an elite player in this league, but he’s also an elite player at a position that does not provide enough value to justify the potential cost. That’s what makes building a football roster so difficult with a hard salary cap. All positions are not created equal, and they should not be valued as such. In this age of analytics, we have numbers that reinforce what should be obvious: No defensive tackle is worth quarterback money.

This is not a conversation about Donald’s ability. We know he’s legitimately great at what he does. It’s a conversation about positional value; how much can a defensive tackle — even one who is in a class of his own as Donald so clearly is — do to help his team win?

The answer: Not as much as you’d think.

The nature of football has always made it difficult to quantify the impact an individual player can have on a given play. But that’s starting to change. Pro Football Focus, for instance, has used its massive database of charted data to develop its own Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat similar to the one baseball analysts have used for years.

It aims to answer the same question: How many wins is an individual worth to his team compared to a replacement-level player, which is defined as “someone who was signed off of the street or the practice squad in a given season,” according to PFF analyst Eric Eager, who developed the metric along with George Chahrouri.

What is Donald worth to the Rams, based on PFF’s WAR stat? About two wins…

No other defensive tackle is making that kind of impact; but in the big picture, Donald is no more valuable than an average starting quarterback.

“The closest full-time QBs to his 1.8 would be Andy Dalton (1.62) and Tyrod Taylor (1.96)” Eager told For The Win in an email. “Some of this is because the value for replacement level is lower for QBs (quarterbacks are harder to find), so competence/brilliance there is more rewarded.”

Are you giving either Dalton or Taylor the kind of money Donald is looking for? Probably not. No smart NFL team is.

According to Eager, skill players — at least those who play a big role in the passing game — tend to provide more value to their teams. So quarterbacks, receivers and even defensive backs are seen as the most valuable players on the field. Defensive linemen are in that second tier (along with linebackers and offensive linemen), hence Donald’s modest WAR.

We can also assess Donald’s value with expected points added, or EPA. This metric uses historical play-by-play data to assign an expected value to any situation a team finds itself in. For example, if a team is facing a first-and-goal from its opponents 5-yard-line, its EPA is based on what other teams in that exact situation have done.

Eager and Chahrouri used EPA, along with PFF’s charting data, to analyze the effect pass rushers can have on an offense. In doing so, they found that Donald cost opponents 28.28 expected points during the 2017 season. Compare that to Joey Bosa, who cost opponents 41.89 expected points rushing off the edge.

Via Pro Football Focus:

Including pressures where other players were involved doesn’t change much. Pressures involving Donald cost the opposition 28.28 expected points, took an average of 2.33 seconds and resulted in 3.4 yards per play. Pressures involving Bosa cost the offense 68.20 expected points, took 2.18 seconds on average and resulted in 1.8 yards per play. Taking away plays that resulted in turnovers from Bosa’s total still leaves Bosa ahead of Donald by over 11 expected points lost.

Let’s say the Rams didn’t have Donald in 2017 and their opponents did score 29 more points over the course of the season. That would give Los Angeles a point-differential of +120 and an expected win total of 10.6 games. Based on their actual 2017 point-differential, the Rams were expected to win about 11.3 games. In other words, Donald’s contribution to the team was worth about 0.7 expected wins.

Either way you look at it, losing Donald would not change much for the Rams, and that’s not even factoring the opportunity cost of paying him an eight-figure salary. Replacing Donald on the defensive line would be an impossible task, but Los Angeles could easily replace the one or two wins he’s worth with an extra $20 million in cap space and the bounty of picks it would potentially receive in a trade.

“I think if any defensive tackle is worth that much money, it’s easily Donald,” says Eager. “That said, given what done to this point, I think it makes perfect sense to explore what other teams would offer them for him, as well as how that money can be distributed in the future.

“It’s also not trivial to note that they’ve traded a decent amount of draft capital for Goff, Peters, Talib, etc., and teams like Seattle are finding out that when veterans start to get old it would have been nice to have those picks.”

If the Rams really want to get petty, they can play the franchise tag game with Donald, saving the team a ton of money while also mitigating the risk of signing a defensive tackle to a long-term deal.

He’ll carry a cap hit of $6.9 million for the 2018 season. Los Angeles could then tag him three consecutive years (the number would jump 120% in that second year and 144% in Year 3), and the total value wouldn’t come close to reaching the number the Rams are reportedly offering him. In total, using the franchise tag would cost the Rams around $65 million and keep Donald on the roster through the 2021 season. That’s the equivalent of a four-year, $65 million with the option to get out of it any time. That sounds pretty good from the team’s perspective and Donald would essentially be forced to accept the situation.

Whether it’s a trade, the franchise tag or just letting Donald walk in exchange for cap room and a compensatory pick, the Rams have plenty of smart options for handling Donald’s contract situation. Paying Donald the money he’s seeking is not one of them.