Myles Garrett, Aaron Donald join forces to wreak havoc in Rams’ Week 9 win over Commanders

• Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald lived up to the billing in their first game together: The Rams teammates notched the two highest pass-rush win rates of qualified defensive linemen in Week 9.

• Endless possibilities to add wrinkles: Defensive coordinator Chris Shula deployed Garrett in the A gap as well as stunts and blitzes to further throw off the Commanders‘ pass protection.

• A defense that's carrying the freight: As Los Angeles' offenses struggles with inconsistencies and injury, its defense is coming into form with foundational and multi-positional star power.

Much of the lives of football fans involve examining hypotheticals, particularly in the dead periods of the NFL offseason. What if Bo Jackson had stayed healthy? What if the Bears picked Patrick Mahomes? are the categories of questions that prompt dream-like fantasies and video game simulations.

Almost never do these borderline utopian situations actually come to fruition. But when the Rams ventured to Northwest Stadium to battle the Commanders on Sunday afternoon, a fairytale came to life by uniting two of the greatest players in league history in the same position group — and it was everything we could’ve hoped for.

Week 9 marked the long-awaited return of Rams superstar Myles Garrett, who had played in just one game with the team following his blockbuster acquisition on June 1. Raising the stakes for Garrett was a largely uninspiring debut against the 49ers in Melbourne, a game in which he tallied only three pressures and a 73.7 PFF pass-rush grade in a lopsided and stunning loss.

Fresh off a knee surgery, Garrett looked like his typically monster self. He destroyed Washington’s offensive gameplan, racking up eight pressures, three sacks and a forced fumble across 30 pass-rushing snaps. The two-time Defensive Player of the Year finished the game with a 94.7 PFF pass-rush grade and a 35.7% pass-rush win rate, the third-highest in a contest this season (minimum 25 pass-rushing snaps).

Garrett’s legendary presence stole the show in and of itself. But what made Sunday’s outing that much more surreal was seeing him join forces with Aaron Donald once and for all.

Having Nos. 95 and 99 on the field together simply proved too much for a Commanders offensive line already without much consistent talent. Donald himself generated four pressures and a 90.9 PFF pass-rush grade on 33 pass-rushing snaps. His 25.8% pass-rush win rate was the second-best of Week 9, behind only his eventually gold jacket-clad teammate.

Sometimes, simply possessing two of the best defensive players to ever wear pads yields self-explanatory results — like the Rams generating 20 pressures, their second-most of 2026. However, peeling back the layers unveils how Garrett and Donald operating in unison gives Los Angeles’ defense a schematic advantage that’s borderline impossible to overcome.

For one, the two leviathans almost entirely shared the field on Sunday. Indeed, thirty-three of Garrett’s 37 snaps came with Donald next to him along Los Angeles’ defensive line.

More specifically, the bulk of those plays put Garrett and Donald aligned over the same side of the Washington offensive line. As a result, the Commanders were almost shoehorned to run away from an entire side of the field — or to attack there at their own risk. In terms of pass protection, Washington sliding its offensive line left or right gave more hands on Donald and Garrett, but it also freed up 1-on-1 chances for effective pass-rushers like Byron Young and Braden Fiske.

As if the calculus of trying to block two of the game’s best pass-rushers wasn’t tough enough, Rams defensive coordinator added several nuances. A principal changeup were stunts, typically deploying Donald as the pick player and having Garrett loop around him. It’s daunting to block the pair just by themselves, but worrying about misdirection and correctly passing off assignments only complicates things.

Likewise, Shula aligned Garrett in the A gaps on three snaps. One of those plays culminated in a gorgeous euro-step sack, reminiscent of Garrett’s utilization there in Cleveland. The other two either involved setting up a stunt for Donald and generating a double-team from the running back in pass protection. In simpler terms, positioning a player like Garrett over the center is nightmare fuel for opposing offensive coordinators, because virtually no player at the position has the physical capability to block someone as big and agile as him.

A logical approach in pairing Garrett and Donald would be to blitz less given their propensity to affect the quarterback independently. However, the Rams sent five or more rushers on 26.2% of passing plays against the Commanders, only slightly lower than their season-average 30.1% rate in Weeks 1-8.

It is true that Shula rarely blitzed with Garrett on the field, doing so just 13.9% of the time against Washington. However, the Rams’ defensive leader shrewdly drew up several concepts that weaponized extra defenders in the same gaps already occupied by Garrett and Donald, thereby creating virtually unblocked rushing lanes.

Unsurprisingly, the Rams’ standard four-man rush also saw very strong marks with such force multipliers at their disposal. When Los Angeles rushed four, the team generated pressure on 41.9% of dropbacks and allowed only a -0.320 EPA per play. Even sending just Garrett, Donald and Fiske yielded a pivotal sack for LA on a third down late in the fourth quarter.

What Shula and the Rams are now doing is putting offenses in an impossible chamber. Los Angeles’ standard rush very well may warrant extra help in pass protection, thereby reducing the number of receivers and/or forcing heavier personnel onto the field. On top of that, teams now have to worry about whether to put four hands on Donald and/or Garrett, if a blitz is coming or simply where Garrett will align. Good luck sleeping at night with those myriad protection responsibilities.

Buoyed by the team’s two Hall of Fame defensive linemen — as well as contributions by other unsung players like Emmanuel Forbes and Omar Speights — the Rams escaped Sunday with an essential but closer-than-expected win. The result came despite Sean McVay’s offense averaging only 4.3 yards per play and Matthew Stafford netting a paltry 59.2 PFF passing grade.

The vast majority of the Rams’ 2026 campaign has seen the team not play at full strength, let alone operate on every cylinder. McVay’s bunch will never see the full fruits of its roster-building labor given that star cornerback Jaylen Watson is out for the year, being down players like Davante Adams and Kobie Turner for at least four weeks and even a possible absence for Puka Nacua on a knee injury endured in Week 9. Beyond that, issues like deep ball accuracy and finding explosives have lingered despite retaining almost identical offensive personnel.

However, having Garrett and Donald creating chaos on the same defensive line will remain something to behold over the rest of the year. Not only does Los Angeles’ front four possess arguably the greatest single-season pass-rushing duo ever — but the unit may also hold the ingredients to a suddenly defense-oriented team hoping to still reach its borderline historic expectations.