Jul 27th 2008 1:03AM by Sportz Assassin (author feed)
Filed under: Rams, NFC West Ahhhh, the sounds of NFL training camps starting. The crack of the pads. Football whizzing in the air. Coaches clapping their hands at the players to get them motivated.

Players holding out.

In the St. Louis Rams camp, the biggest story is Steven Jackson holding out for a new extension. Jackson has been looking for this all summer, but it surprised the team that he didn’t show up for camp. Since he is under contract for the upcoming season, the Rams are fining Jackson $15,000 a day.

Oh, and they’ve cut off negotiations until Jackson gets to camp:”Where we stand right now is that (Thursday) evening we made Steven an offer through Eugene Parker which would put Steven literally in the top group of running backs in the NFL,” [Rams president of football operations Jay] Zygmunt said. “Eugene called me sometime shortly after lunch (Friday) and informed me that they weren’t accepting the offer. And at that time, he told me that Steven would not be showing up. He just talked about (Friday), he didn’t mention when he might be coming in or anything of that nature.”

“I advised him that this would be considered an unexcused absence,” Zygmunt said. “He would be fined. And I said that as soon as he got into camp and he does show up, we’d like to continue the negotiations. But we will not be negotiating while he is out of camp.”
The interesting thing is that the team felt they had a workable agreement towards the end of last year. However, Jackson has since switched agents and there hasn’t been a deal done. Now let’s see what happens once the Rams drew their line in the sand.