Rams Make Offer to Donnie Jones

by Ryan Van Bibber on Apr 13, 2007 8:13 AM CDT in News

Big Red shared the news in the comments yesterday that the Rams had made an offer to Dolphins punter Donnie Jones. Jones is a restricted free agent, and if he accepts the Rams 5 year $5.59 million offer, the Dolphins will get our 7th round pick as compensation. Not a bad deal.

The contract standoff with Matt Turk, I suspect the salary demands were a bit too high for the Rams tastes, particularly for a guy with an injury history...a punter with an injury history. Turk's demands have not been reported, as far as I can tell, but I would guess the salary was somewhere north of a million bucks given that he wanted to be among the league's top punters. Miami still has the chance to match our offer to Jones, who was holding out there, so there's still the potential that all we've done is negotiate him a new contract. The hope is that the Phins will be willing to part ways with his services after their contract stalemate. I'd bet that the Broncos offer to Sauerbrun, later matched by the Patriots, set the market for punters and let the Rams move forward with this offer.

The Steelers have been the team expressing the most interest in Turk this offseason.

Surprise, surprise, Jones was a Dolphin during Linehan's season as offensive coordinator there. TST called it back in March as the former Dolphins plays poured through the doors to Rams park.

Donnie Jones is solid punter with two full seasons of the job under his belt. As a RFA, he would cost a 7th round pick. He played with Linehan in Miami in 2005, when he punted for an average 43.5 yards a punt. Hmmm, Linehan seems to really like former Dolphins players, so there's reason to believe the Rams might at least be interested. Of course, RFAs don't get a lot of action in the market, just 4 RFAs switched teams last year.

Via the Phinsider, Jones' agent, America's sweetheart Drew Rosenhouse, believes that the Phins will not match the offer as they have never had any serious talks. Here's the Miami take on the situation from the Phinsider:

Good move, I say, as we can always find an adequate punter soeewhere. But don't think a punter isn't important...with this offense, whatever punter we end up with may be seeing a lot of action.

I guess we could throw in B.J. Sander out of pity...

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