Two years and eight months between games
Aaron Donald last played an NFL game on 14 January 2024, a wild-card defeat to Detroit. He expects to play the next one on Monday night against the Giants. That leaves a gap of two years and eight months on either side of the most disruptive interior defender of his generation.
The comeback was never a sudden decision. Donald looked comfortable in retirement until the Rams traded for Myles Garrett, and the rumblings started almost immediately afterwards. He deliberated in public, Los Angeles issued occasional updates on where his thinking had reached, and the answer arrived on 30 August as a one-year contract worth $20 million.
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He signed too late for the game he signed up for
The timing cost him the opener. Los Angeles flew to Melbourne, lost 27-7 to San Francisco, and Donald watched. That match was also meant to be the first look at Donald and Garrett working the same line of scrimmage. Garrett produced nothing measurable in the loss, then had knee surgery.
Garrett is on injured reserve and will miss at least four weeks. The pairing that made this entire project plausible has still never taken a snap together, which turns Donald’s first assignment into damage control rather than a coronation.
“I think we’ve got a great defense, a great team, a lot of great pieces,” Donald said, via Nate Atkins of The Athletic. “Obviously, I would love for him to be out there, but he won’t be gone forever. … Hold it down while he’s gone.”
Thirty-five, and the expectations have not moved
Los Angeles opened the season as Super Bowl favourites. That is a heavy label for a team that has already lost a game by twenty points and its best pass rusher for a month.
Donald is 35 and nobody is asking him to be what he was at 28. A reduced version of a three-time Defensive Player of the Year still forces offensive coordinators to redraw their protection plans, and the Rams need that more now than they did in August.
Kickoff in Los Angeles is 5:15 p.m. Pacific on Monday.
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