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How Aaron Donald Knew His Unparalleled NFL Career Was Complete
As Los Angeles attempts to map a football team without its star defensive tackle, coach Sean McVay says the three-time DPOY leaves behind a legacy on and off the field.
ALBERT BREER7 HOURS AGO

Aaron Donald knew his career was complete on the night of Jan. 14. Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay got that message loud and clear the next day when the all-planet all-timer came into his office as the team was shaking off its playoff ouster in Detroit the night before.

“I’m full,” Donald simply told McVay.

Nothing was official yet. But the coach had all the information he needed.

“I’m just like, And you should be. You have every right to feel that way,” McVay said over the phone Sunday afternoon. “What an amazing thing. The words won’t do justice to the way that he so eloquently articulated it to me and just put it in a way that, as a human being, all you’re really looking for is to be at peace and to be happy. He was full. And, man, did you feel that. You’re just so happy because he earned it too.”

Donald earned absolutely everything that’s been said about him over the last few days.

The 32-year-old was the 2014 Defensive Rookie of the Year after being drafted 13th that April. He was first-team All-Pro in eight of nine years after that, with the only exception coming in his injury-marred season of ’22. He missed six games that season, and only three in the other nine years of his career. He was a Pro Bowler in all 10 of his NFL seasons, and won Defensive Player of the Year in ’17, ’18 and ’20.

He is quite simply, to this era, what Lawrence Taylor was in the 1980s, or what Deion Sanders was in the ’90s: a defensive player so great that, at his peak, there was no parallel for him. And, thanks to a relentless passion for both football and competition, Donald’s peak really encased his entire career, right from the start. Jeff Fisher, who coached Donald from 2014–16, will tell you the start goes back to before Donald even put on pads for a full-contact practice.

“You get into camp and you’re trying to teach guys how to practice without pads, and he’s just wrecking practice—so you know when the pads go on he’s going to wreck practice,” Fisher says. “You know this guy’s going to live in the backfield. You knew that. And the one thing that’s interesting is the countless offensive linemen that got better that were on the Rams roster during that period of time because they had to practice against him.”

And therein lies the interesting thing about Donald’s greatness—it seems like half the stories Fisher and McVay, the two head coaches he played for, tell aren’t from the game field.

Similar to Fisher, McVay will never forget the first practices he had with Donald. This was as a coach who had worked against Donald as Washington’s offensive coordinator, which gave McVay a good idea of what a terror Donald was on the field. And yet, even given that experience, McVay wasn’t fully ready for what he was about to see in a non-padded practice.

“The only exposure I had to him in preseason activities, because of some of the contract stuff, was when he came to one of the first voluntary mini camps that you are allotted for new coaching staffs,” McVay says. “I have never seen somebody single-handedly destroy practice the way that he did in that two-day practice session. It’s hard enough to block him as it is. But then when you don’t have any pads or anything to really be able to get fits, his quickness, his get off, his accuracy with his hands, it was a human highlight reel.”

Because of all that, McVay says with a laugh, he actually felt fortunate that Donald held out through the coach’s first two offseasons in Los Angeles: “He steals souls. Here’s the thing, it gives false tells for everybody else on defense, and then you just totally ruin the confidence of any player that you’re going against.”

And did it ever translate onto the game field.

Coming out, Donald was seen by many, because of height, weight and length deficiencies, as a player who would need to be in a certain scheme, and need to be paced, to be his best. But he proved himself to be a monster in, well, just about every system—from Fisher and Gregg Williams’s aggressive 4–3 to Wade Phillips’s attacking 3–4 to the more conservative Vic Fangio–inspired looks Brandon Staley and Raheem Morris ran. And Donald proved to be a player with unbelievable endurance: He played 90.41%, 83.57%, 84.47% and 89.1% of the Rams’ defensive snaps in 2018, ’19, ’20 and ’21, respectively, which are absurdly high numbers for a defensive tackle.

Part of it was because physically, he was so strong, so quick, so low-to-the-ground and so good with his hands that trying to block him was like trying to catch a greased salmon. It was also, though, because his work didn’t stop with the physical stuff.

“He’s looking around and he’s the last one to put his hand in the ground,” Fisher says. “He knows protection. He knows which way the center’s turning. He knows where the help’s coming from. … He knows where the receivers are. He may not admit to it, but he knows formations. He knows exactly what to expect from a protection standpoint.

“The interesting thing was over the years, just talking to people, the offensive coordinator sitting up in the box calling the plays would have the mandate all week prior to playing the Rams, O.K., you guys got one job and that’s to tell me when he’s not in, when he’s taking a breath. They’d have like a separate call sheet for that. But when he’s in, I gotta stay with these calls.”

It all added up to, simply, one of the greatest careers a defensive player has ever had. Maybe the greatest.

“They asked me personally, where does he rank [of guys I coached]? He’s there with Reggie White, as far as the career,” Fisher says. “Different positions. Reggie was either, (a), a left end or (b), we put him on the nose. Reggie just couldn’t play any of the other positions, because it was awkward for him. The dominating player that he was, that’s where he kind of fit in. …

“Aaron was different. Just watch him. I’m so excited for him. I’m honored that I got to be somebody that got to be around him and the career that he had. When the great ones come, everybody wants to be part of those careers. It was just delightful to coach, he’s a great young man.”

Through our conversation, that’s what McVay kept coming back to, as well—how the person, the dad he is, the worker he is, the teammate he is, helps to complete the picture of just how impactful Donald has been on everyone around him.

Now, McVay is charged with charting life without him for the Rams.

The coach said he had a feeling, really, all year this might happen. Donald would take an extra moment during a game, or an additional few minutes with a young player after practice, or time to laugh with a buddy of his. He even went a little further with Christmas gifts this year, and those, to McVay, were all tells on where the veteran’s head was at. And maybe his way of leaving behind a little something extra for those he played with.

“I’m hopeful that he’ll be around a lot,” McVay says. “He’s welcome. I think the way that he lives on is you continue to honor his legacy and use him with the stories that you can tell to these guys. Fortunately, a lot of these guys have seen it, so when you reference it, they’ve seen it and you can use that as an example. His legend will never go away. There are stories upon stories. There’s evidence on the film. I think the things that resonate the most are usually storytelling when you’re really trying to paint a picture or teach a lesson.

“And he’ll be someone that I reference for the rest of my life as long as I’m fortunate enough to be coaching.”

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