- Aaron Donald is in his own tier of dominance: Donald recorded a 90.0-plus overall PFF grade in 10 straight seasons, becoming the only player ever to accomplish that.
- Donald would have plenty of help along the Rams' defensive line: Determining whether or not to double-team Donald or Myles Garrett is troubling enough, but Donald would also operate alongside a burgeoning star in Kobie Turner.
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Sure-fire Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald captured headlines when it was revealed that he officially worked out for the Rams in early August.
Donald has made it clear that he will not return to football unless he feels he can still perform at a high level, but his comeback to the Rams appears increasingly plausible as the regular season approaches.
If Donald does play again, it would likely be to contribute down the stretch. At 35 years old, he doesn’t need to withstand an 18-game season followed by a playoff run, nor does he need to travel to Melbourne, Australia, for the Rams’ season opener. The ideal scenario for both Donald and Los Angeles is likely for him to rejoin the team in some capacity between now and the Rams’ mid-November bye week before working toward seeing the field during the latter stages of the season.
Donald was last seen on an NFL field at the end of the 2023 season. Thirteen sacks across his final two years showed signs of decline on paper for a player who averaged almost 15 sacks per season between 2018 and 2021. However, his underlying performances remained among the best in the sport, as evidenced by his 90.8 overall PFF grade in his final campaign.
Donald remains the only player in PFF history to post 10 consecutive seasons with an overall PFF grade above 90.0. Despite not playing for two years, he still leads the NFL in total pressures over the past decade with 717. His 97 sacks during that span rank fourth, trailing only prospective teammate Myles Garrett, who leads the league with 126.5 sacks since entering the NFL.
Aaron Donald: PFF grades (2014 to 2023)
| Season | Snaps | Defense | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 774 | 90.2 | 2 |
| 2015 | 984 | 92.9 | 1 |
| 2016 | 888 | 92.6 | 1 |
| 2017 | 935 | 94.4 | 1 |
| 2018 | 1197 | 94.8 | 1 |
| 2019 | 997 | 93.6 | 1 |
| 2020 | 968 | 94.2 | 1 |
| 2021 | 1268 | 93.5 | 1 |
| 2022 | 620 | 90.5 | 3 |
| 2023 | 921 | 90.8 | 2 |
Donald’s somewhat premature retirement meant we never saw him gradually decline into an average — or even merely above-average — player. With no real precedent to draw from, we can’t definitively rule out the possibility that he’s still one of the best interior pass-rushers in the world in 2026.
If Donald does return, he’ll almost certainly have the strongest supporting cast of his career along the defensive line, highlighted by Garrett, a player of whom Donald has never had the luxury of lining up alongside, and vice versa.
Throughout the final five years of his career, Donald was double-teamed on more than two-thirds of his pass-rushing snaps. That still didn’t stop him from producing some of the most dominant individual performances we’ve ever seen from an NFL defensive lineman.
Likewise, Garrett has been the NFL’s most frequently double-teamed edge defender over the past two seasons. The nature of his alignment means he faces far fewer true double teams than Donald did on the interior, with most offenses instead relying on chipping tight ends to slow him down, often to little avail.
If this duo does pair up at some point this season, my guess is that opponents’ game plans for Garrett won’t change too much. He’s in the prime of his career and has to be accounted for on every passing down. Donald’s presence shouldn’t alter that, at least not initially, until teams get a better sense of the level he’s operating at.
If Donald returns and looks every bit the player he was before retiring, that’s when opposing offenses will start ringing the alarm bells. The Rams rushed four or more defenders on 98.5% of plays last season. Even against a standard four-man rush, double-teaming both future Hall of Famers would leave just four eligible receivers in the passing concept against seven coverage defenders, including a star the caliber of Trent McDuffie.
How often would we actually see that, though? Will Donald have the conditioning to handle a heavy workload? We know he’s kept himself in phenomenal shape since leaving the league, but physical appearance and football conditioning are two entirely different things. The good news is that Donald was never a player who needed to come off the field.
His final season saw him play 50 or more snaps in 13 of 17 games. For comparison, Los Angeles’ starting interior duo of Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske surpassed the 50-snap threshold just seven times combined across 40 appearances last season.
Turner and Fiske both return in 2026. So too does Poona Ford, who enjoyed a career year after bouncing around four teams in four seasons. Ford recorded a career-high 30 defensive stops against the run.
Even beyond that trio, the Rams’ next three rotational interior defenders from last season — Tyler Davis, Ty Hamilton and Larrell Murchison — all return as well. This is essentially an unchanged interior defensive line group from what was already the second-highest-graded unit in the NFL last season.
Turner shouldn’t be overlooked as an ideal running mate for Donald. Both are relatively undersized for the position, but on obvious passing downs — where you’d assume Donald would be deployed most often — this could be the best interior pass-rushing duo in football.
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Read morePFF Interior Defender Rankings: The top 32 players ahead of the 2026 NFL season
(opens in new tab)Turner finished tied for second among interior defenders with 69 pressures, ranked seventh in sacks and sixth in PFF pass-rushing grade. Yet his impressive 12.7% pressure rate would still place as the second-lowest mark of Aaron Donald’s career. He simply operated at a different level from the moment he entered the league.
Among the four highest-graded pass-protecting offensive lines from last season, the Rams will face three of them in consecutive weeks between Weeks 3 and 5. Matchups against the Broncos, Eagles and Bills are among the most mouth-watering games of the early schedule, but they could easily come and go before Donald even puts his pads back on.
Later in the season, two tantalizing matchups against the Seahawks in the space of three weeks could define the NFC West race. With both teams holding legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, there’s every chance they could meet three times within the span of a month once the postseason begins.
No franchise has felt Donald’s wrath more than Seattle. The Seahawks were the reigning Super Bowl champions when the Rams selected Donald 13th overall in the 2014 NFL Draft. Since then, his 124 pressures and 17.5 sacks against Seahawks quarterbacks are both his highest totals against any opponent. So too is his 94.2 career PFF pass-rushing grade versus Seattle.
However, in his only career meeting with Sam Darnold back in 2020, Darnold escaped all 10 of Donald’s pressures and led his then 0-13 New York Jets to their first victory of the season.
Whether Donald ultimately returns or not, the fact this conversation is even happening speaks volumes. Most Hall of Famers are remembered for what they once were. Donald retired while still playing at an elite level, leaving open the possibility that one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history may still have something left to offer.
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