Aaron Donald came out of retirement Sunday after 17 months away from the NFL, agreeing to a one-year, $20 million deal with the Los Angeles Rams that includes playoff incentives capable of raising the total value to $30 million, according to reports from ESPN and NFL Network.
The three-time Defensive Player of the Year was on the practice field Sunday but Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay said the team has not determined whether Donald will play in their season opener, a Week 1 game against the San Francisco 49ers played in Melbourne, Australia. McVay said the team will take it one day at a time as they assess whether it is best to play him in Australia.
Donald initially retired in March 2024 after 10 NFL seasons. He described the decision to return as a long process that began 13 to 14 weeks ago and involved nonstop preparation. He said it was not easy and required hard work and many conversations with many different people, but he ultimately felt good enough to come back and needed to reach 100 percent commitment before making the call.
McVay said the trade for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett in June helped trigger conversations about a possible return. He said watching the roster being assembled made him wish he was still playing.
What Donald brings back
He is 35 years old. He is an eight-time first-team All-Pro, a 10-time Pro Bowl selection, the 2014 Defensive Rookie of the Year and holds the Rams’ franchise record for career sacks. His 111 sacks are the second most among primary defensive tackles since sacks became an official statistic in 1982, behind John Randle’s 137.5.
In the 2018 season, He recorded 20.5 sacks while drawing double-team blocking on 64 percent of his snaps, a rate that exceeded Garrett and T.J. Watt combined in their respective 20-sack seasons. Since double-team rates were first tracked in 2017, only three players have recorded a 20-sack season. Two of them are now on the same Rams defense.
When he appears in a game he will join Deion Sanders as the only players in NFL history to earn five first-team All-Pro selections, have a layoff exceeding 750 days and return to the NFL.
The Rams’ defensive picture
Los Angeles entered the season as the favorite to win Super Bowl LXI according to DraftKings, in part because the combination of Donald and Garrett creates a defensive interior that no offensive line has had to face before. The Rams are the only team in NFL history to enter a season with multiple players who have each won multiple Defensive Player of the Year awards.
McVay’s approach to the return is deliberately measured. He said the first question he asked was whether Donald wants to play, and that if the answer is yes, the next question is what the ramp-up looks like. He described the physical understanding required to perform at his level as more nuanced than anything McVay himself fully comprehends, and said the team will feel it out one day at a time.
He has spent his entire career with the Rams, who selected him with the No. 13 pick in 2014.
