Aaron Donald calls it a decade, and QBs exhale

The 3-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year retires at, or near, the top of his game.

Aaron Donald talked of his career as if it were a Triple Crown. He had played a full decade for the team that had drafted him. He had won a Super Bowl with that team, and played in another. On Friday he retired with that team, and thoughtfully did so before the draft, so the Rams could scour the colleges for another off-center powerhouse who was a lot better on the field than he was on spec.

Maybe it was a coincidence, but the Rams signed Jimmy Garoppolo as a backup quarterback hours after Donald’s announcement, which means they probably won’t be drafting a QB as the prophets seem to think. Surely they know they won’t be that lucky again. Twelve other teams had a chance at Donald in that 2014 draft, and those teams and 19 others never could block him.

Donald would have preferred to go out on top, as he almost did after the Rams subdued Cincinnati two years ago. Nevertheless, he went out with the Rams pointing north again. They made a spirited late-season run, got into the playoffs, came within a play (their fans would say a call) of endangering the Lions in Detroit. As for Donald, he was ranked second among interior linemen by Pro Football Focus, right behind Dexter Lawrence of the Cowboys. He also played the seventh-most snaps of any grunt, and was out there for 16 games.

So his Triple Crown really is a Grand Slam. At 32, Donald has a lot of life to live, and apparently every capability of living it to its fullest, although we often don’t know about a football player’s long-term equilibrium until, well, the long term.

Donald was barely six feet tall. Although he was impossibly strong, and so developed that he had a rough time finding tuxedos for those college football all-star banquets that he attended while at the U. of Pittsburgh, he was not an unmistakable football player when walking down the street. Put the No. 99 jersey on him, however, and he was all ball. At Pitt he had 26.5 tackles for loss in his junior year, before he was drafted. He had 25 in 2018, when he won his second of three Defensive Player of the Year awards. He also had 20 ½ sacks that season, and hit quarterbacks 41 times. He retires as the fifth leading active sacker, with 111 in 10 seasons.

What separated him was his launch point. Donald did not swoop on quarterbacks from the wing, like Von Miller, the active leader, does. He got moved around by his coordinators, but he was generally on the inside, in the midst of the traffic. He was also a renowned run-stopper, but his main function was to deny the quarterbacks the bubble they often use when stepping up and avoiding the outside menace. As former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon said, nobody is going to line up a tight end behind the guard. Protection schemes for inside rushers are extremely limited. The only tactics against someone like Donald were double-teaming and holding. Donald was weary of both, but they were inconveniences, not deterrents. He was so high-maintenance that his teammates were able to frolic. We’ll see how long their fun extends in 2024.

Both Gannon and Les Snead, the Rams’ general manager who took Donald, likened him to John Randle, the Hall of Famer for the Vikings who used to study media guides and memorize tidbits about the guys who would try to block him. “If you ever played in My Fair Lady in the school play, or if you were on the debate team, you were going to hear about it,” Gannon said. Both Randle and Donald had the kind of quickness that mocked preparation, and Donald had uncommon strength, enough to throw 300-pound guards into the thighs of those quarterbacks.

Donald had a placid career off the field with the Rams, whether it was in St. Louis or Los Angeles. He often eased into the season, missing preseason practice, and then he would show up and play as if it were mid-October. Sean McVay didn’t believe in playing his top guys in the exhibitions anyway. He knew Donald didn’t need training camp, because Donald’s whole year was a training camp. Donald began lifting weights at 6 a.m. with his dad when he was 11 years old and has rarely missed a day since. When Donald was a rookie, someone asked Snead if all the rookies had found companionship for Thanksgiving. Everyone but Donald, Snead replied. This was just another Thursday for him. Weights and game tape were all he needed.

And yet Donald was the afterthought on Draft Day. Snead had made off with Washington’s first-round pick, which was second in that draft, thanks to a trade that the Redskins used to take quarterback Robert Griffin III. With that choice the Rams took tackle Greg Robinson of Auburn, who became an anvil that could have made the whole draft a Poseidon Adventure if not for Donald.

“People said we had a good draft at the time but it wasn’t because of the 13th pick,” Snead said. “It was because of the second.”

Fortunately he had consulted with scout John Zernhelt before he went to the Senior Bowl, and Zernhelt told him, “When you look at Donald, forget about his height.” Donald went on to “win every drill” of the week, according to Phil Savage, who was running the Senior Bowl at the time.

Now Donald has reached the finish line, and this gives the haberdashers in Canton, Ohio five full years to put together a generously-cut gold jacket. Whether Donald is the greatest Ram ever is debatable, with the likes of Deacon Jones, Eric Dickerson, Jackie Slater and Merlin Olsen in the picture, and it’s not very important anyway. What will be important is the identity of the first player to arrive in the parking lot every morning. There’s an opening there, unless Donald decides to show up anyway, just because he always did. The lesson he leaves the younger Rams is simple. Your habits can become your force.