IRVINE, Calif. -- Sean McVay's daily, post-practice news conference was winding down Tuesday afternoon and nobody had asked him The Question yet. So Artis Twyman, the Los Angeles Rams' senior director of communications, playfully asked it himself.

Any update on Aaron Donald?

The answer was, and continues to be, "No." Or, "Not really." Or, "Not right now." Or, 'Hopefully soon." Or some blend of all that.

The Rams spent three weeks conducting training camp on the campus of UC Irvine, and Donald, their best player, never showed up. On Thursday, the day they packed up, a report from ESPN's Adam Schefter said Donald's holdout may spill into the regular season, with one source going so far as to suggest Donald might not show up all year.

As if McVay, the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, didn't already have enough on his plate.

He's trying to re-establish the Rams in the nation's second-largest media market, working to vastly improve the NFL's worst offense. And now he must navigate the sensitivities of a prolonged contractual holdout, a complex, high-stakes balancing act that requires keeping the team focused while keeping the players informed. It requires preaching the importance of practice without alienating an absent teammate. It requires absorbing persistent questions he doesn't have the answers to.

On the eve of the first training camp practice, McVay and general manager Les Snead held an impromptu joint news conference in hopes of getting out in front of the Donald situation. In a 10-minute media session that Friday, Snead and McVay used the word "respect" to describe Donald, his representatives at CAA and the process 11 times. But the questions persisted.

Over the next 20 days, McVay stood in front of a Rams backdrop and took questions from the media after a standard practice on 15 separate occasions. He was asked for an update on Donald's situation -- either by a reporter or, on one occasion, a team spokesman -- 11 times.

The gist of the answer remained the same -- no update -- but the delivery underwent slight modifications.

Twice, McVay said he was "optimistic" something would get done. He once called the communication "ongoing." The word "solution" was used 10 times, always as a means of saying that the Rams' front office -- namely, Snead and chief operating officer Kevin Demoff -- were working hard to find one. He said his players have been unaffected in their work and that he was confident Donald was working, too. Sometimes, he also had fun with the answer.

McVay was asked on Aug. 2 if he was hopeful of seeing Donald soon, and he smiled.

"I’m hopeful to see Aaron Donald at any time," he said.

On Sunday, he told the media why it's easy to see that he does not have an update.

"If I did," McVay said, grinning, "you’d see a lot of smiles on my face right now, and hopefully it’d be good news."

On Monday, McVay was asked once again for an update.

"No update on Aaron," he said. "Kind of still the same right now.”

He was asked again Wednesday.

“If there was," McVay said, "I wish I could tell you."

Donald's contract situation was never expected to have an easy solution. He deserves to be the game's highest-paid defensive player, but the 26-year-old is still so early in his career, with two years left on a rookie contract that will pay him less than $9 million from 2017 to 2018. It places the Rams somewhere between doing what is fiscally prudent and doing what is right by their best player. One aspect that particularly hurts the Rams is that the highest-paid player at Donald's position, Ndamukong Suh, is very nearly the game's highest-paid defensive player, with a six-year contract that is valued at more than $114 million and comes with nearly $60 million guaranteed.

Suh didn't get his deal until he played five NFL seasons and ventured into free agency, but Donald's side can easily make a case that their client deserves to be the NFL's highest-paid defensive tackle, especially since Suh's deal was signed two years ago.

The Rams have said the right things publicly all year. At the scouting combine in early March, Snead said Donald "deserves a raise." At an event for season-ticket holders in early June, Demoff said Donald "deserves to be paid among the elite players in our game." At a news conference before the start of camp, Snead emphasized once again that Donald "is a priority." But clearly the Rams also want to preserve as much future salary-cap flexibility as possible.

Snead spoke again last Friday, the day the Rams acquired wide receiver Sammy Watkins from the Bills, and said there's "not any movement" in the Donald negotiations.

"There is hope," Snead added. "There's hope that he'll be a Ram a long time."

All McVay has is hope, a word he has continually clung to when addressing Donald's situation this summer.

Asked Thursday if he is concerned Donald's holdout might spill into the regular season, McVay said, "Our approach is exactly the same: We're continuing to try and find a solution. He's a very important part of what we want to do."

McVay was later asked if he ever took Donald's holdout personally, an easy rationalization for any first-year head coach.

“Your initial instincts could be to do that," McVay said. "But spending some time with him when he was here for the mandatory minicamp, it definitely gave me a different perspective and an understanding that there’s business elements to this. And one of the things that I can appreciate about Aaron is that he loves this game. He’s all about the right stuff. He’s one of those players that coaches love to work with. He’s one of those players that are why you coach, you know, to be around players like that. But you also respect and understand that this is how people make their living. Those are things that I would never try to get in between."