The Los Angeles Rams spent the offseason assembling what is as close to a dream team as the NFL has seen in recent history. They added two-time Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, as well as Super Bowl–winning cornerbacks Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson, to a roster that already included reigning league MVP Matthew Stafford and elite wide receivers Davante Adams and Puka Nacua. Yet, as the Rams opened training camp this week, the most intriguing star was one who isn’t currently on the field: Aaron Donald.
Donald retired in March 2024 after 10 NFL seasons, all with the Rams, and his Hall of Fame résumé was already complete: He was a three-time Defensive Player of the Year with eight first-team All-Pro selections, 111 sacks, 24 forced fumbles, and one Super Bowl title. He was the gold standard for interior defensive linemen nearly from the moment he was taken with the 13th pick in the 2014 draft, an unblockable force who caused nightmares for opposing quarterbacks for a decade.
Now, though, Donald is apparently rethinking things. He’s 35 years old and has been out of the league for two seasons—but a by-product of the Rams’ fuck-them-picks all-in push for a Super Bowl is that one of the best defensive players ever is seriously considering a comeback.
You don’t have to search hard to find video clips of Donald’s workouts over the past two years. The man has stayed in shape since he walked away with a year remaining on his contract. He lives in the San Fernando Valley, and earlier this month, he was spotted working out at the Rams training facility, which helped fuel initial speculation that he was considering a return.
That’s well beyond rumor now, and his official unretirement seems more like a matter of when, not if. L.A. head coach Sean McVay has told Donald that the team is ready to welcome him back into the locker room and into the defensive line rotation. It is now up to Donald to decide whether he feels physically and mentally ready to resume his career.
“I told him, ‘You went out on your own terms, and I think it’s important that you come back on your terms too,’” McVay told The Ringer this week.
That means the Rams are exercising a certain level of patience at the start of training camp—considering Donald’s potential return while operating without him currently on the field. But there’s also an inherent urgency that comes with having a veteran-laden roster and a franchise in win-now mode. Those close to the team say that the Rams have no expectation of getting a decision from Donald until after they wrap up a few weeks of camp practices at Loyola Marymount University, but a decision could come not long after they return to their home facility in Woodland Hills.
Regardless, it’s a surreal proposition that come September, the Rams could have Garrett—the NFL’s single-season sack leader and winner of two of the past three Defensive Player of the Year awards—lining up on the edge, and Donald in a three-point stance ready to bully his way past opposing guards. But it’s a vision the Rams are preparing for. The coaching staff is already considering what sort of load Donald might be able to handle, and what sort of packages the team could run with Garrett and Donald on the field at the same time. Donald played 867 snaps in 2023, tied for fourth most among all NFL defensive tackles that season—and he played more than 80 percent of the defensive snaps in 11 of the Rams’ 17 games. General manager Les Snead told The Ringer that if Donald returns, he’d play “nowhere close to that” number of snaps, at least not initially. “You want to keep him fresh,” Snead said. “It would be a bonus that way.”
Aaron Donald. Generational talent. First-ballot Hall of Famer. As simply a bonus? Now this is the type of greed they talk about in the Bible.
But it’s a luxury the Rams have put themselves in position to have. Just 14 months ago, Donald said he was going on auditions in hopes of getting into acting—how very Hollywood of him—and that he didn’t miss playing football. “I don’t even have the passion or excitement to play football,” Donald told Pittsburgh radio station 93.7 The Fan in an interview when he was selected for the Pitt Hall of Fame in 2025. “I will always love football, but once you lose the passion, it was time to walk away.”
That wasn’t just lip service. He had seriously considered retiring after the Rams’ Super Bowl run in the 2021 season, and when Donald retired after the 2023 season, he did so with conviction. McVay said he believed him when the player told him his career was complete.
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“He wouldn't even joke about coming back the last two years. So for him to acknowledge this, he's very serious about it,” McVay told The Ringer.
So what changed? Probably Garrett, to start. The Rams spent months quietly negotiating with the Browns on a blockbuster trade that the two teams finally consummated on June 1. The Rams sent their 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second-rounder, and a third in 2029, as well as pass rusher Jared Verse—the team’s first-round pick from 2024 and that season’s Defensive Rookie of the Year—to Cleveland in exchange for Garrett. With Garrett on one edge and fourth-year player Byron Young, who had a dozen sacks last season, on the other, Donald’s days of facing triple-teams (or quadruple-teams!) would likely be history.
“I’d love to learn from him,” Garrett told reporters about Donald on Wednesday. “If he’s here, I’m going to be excited to be his teammate, his partner in crime, and I think we could do great things.”
But there was also the addition of two new starting cornerbacks, McDuffie and Watson, both of whom won Super Bowls with the Chiefs, to upgrade the secondary. That was the team’s weakness down the stretch last season, particularly in the NFC championship game loss to the Seahawks, when Sam Darnold threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns. The ability to play tighter coverage downfield or use those new corners in blitz packages would only make Donald’s’s job easier up front if he comes on the field in obvious passing situations.
“The game honors toughness, and all the guys that we’ve added are physically and mentally tough,” McVay said. “We had that [in 2025] for the most part, but I think there’s a play style that both Jaylen Watson and Trent McDuffie play with that becomes contagious.”
Donald also has to know he’d be joining a team with a high-octane offense led by Stafford, who earlier this year received a pay bump as part of an extension that will keep the 2025 MVP under contract through 2027. Without question, this Rams roster is more talented and deeper at just about every position than the one Donald was last a part of.
“I think there is something about, he knows that a lot of the stuff he's doing [in retirement], he can come back and do, but there's a timeline on how long he can play football, and he's got that itch,” McVay said.
If Donald does decide to return, there will be financial implications for the Rams. He has one year and about $25 million remaining on his previous contract, but L.A. would likely need to rework that deal to keep itself under the salary cap. Los Angeles had the league’s lowest-paid defense in 2025, and the moves to add Garrett, McDuffie, and Watson drastically changed that accounting. But it’s hard to imagine money being a true roadblock at this point. If Donald wants to play, the Rams will almost certainly figure out a way to make it happen.
For now, though, the team can only wait for a decision. And while it does, it’ll dream about an unfathomable future of sacks and a front line that would be the nightmare of every opposing quarterback.
