Peter King on AD - Hello, Next Gen: AD & LT

Hello, Next Gen: AD & LT

Before I write about Aaron Donald, I want you to watch a short video of Donald’s 100th career sack, eight days ago against Kyler Murray of the Cardinals:


So … There’s an avalanche of newfangled (and very valid) stats we can use as measurable metrics in football today. When I started covering the game in 1984, the NFL was three decades away from tracking the speed and exertion of players with tiny trackers embedded into uniforms, for instance. In the eighties, you had to trust your eyes.

My eyes told me, covering Lawrence Taylor and the New York Giants for four of their glory years, that Taylor was the best defensive player I saw then, and I’d probably ever see, a merciless roadrunner/hostage-taker of offensive souls. Not only was Taylor a sack machine and fast enough to beat any tackle on the edge, but he could bull-rush like a nose tackle. Boy, was he mean. Effectively mean.

Today, I’m here to say Aaron Donald joins Lawrence Taylor on my personal two-player Mount Rushmore of Defense of the last four decades. Donald, truly, is probably better, and I can’t believe I’m saying that. But you know how Bulls-philes who love Michael Jordan said there’d never be anyone like Jordan, ever? Maybe not. But LeBron’s close. Kobe’s close. Same with there’ll-never-be-another-Joe Montana. Well, Tom Brady came along. I’m not a fan of watching some all-timer play and saying there’ll never be another one as good, or nearly as good. There almost always is.

Metrics say it, and my eyes see it in their 39th season of watching great players play: Aaron Donald is at least as destructive, and at least as impactful, on a game as Lawrence Taylor was.

The final bit of proof came eight days ago, in Arizona, in the video you just watched. Donald was lined up across from right guard Will Hernandez of the Cardinals, in an uncommon (for Donald) one-on-one, no-chip-help look. Per Next Gen Stats, Donald was 6.15 yards from Murray, in the shotgun, at the snap of the ball. When Donald beat Hernandez to the inside on the pass-rush, Donald was 2.36 yards from Murray when both were in full gallop, Murray trying to evade Donald. Donald dove at Murray at the Arizona 34-, and clipped the QB’s ankle with one outstretched whack of the hand, and Murray went down. Murray intentionally grounded the ball while going down, but the officials ruled he was down before releasing it, and that was Donald’s 100th sack.

Next Gen Stats records speeds of everything, including players at all points of the game. The burst of Donald coming off jousting with Hernandez showed him running 14.09 mph to catch Murray. What’s significant about that? Donald, while sacking Murray, had a faster burst to catch a quarterback than any of the great edge players in football—Micah Parsons, T.J. Watt, Khalil Mack, Myles Garrett, Joey Bosa, Nick Bosa—had in the first three weeks of this season.

This is the essence of Aaron Donald: At 31, after seriously considering retirement last winter, he can still bull-rush and toss aside a 335-pound guard, then catch one of the fastest quarterbacks in NFL history for a sack.

It’s perfect and just, really, that Donald has more sacks than any player in football since he broke into the league in 2014, and his 100th came against a quarterback who runs a 4.38 40-yard dash in full retreat mode.

“I’m an edge rusher playing inside,” Donald told me the other day, driving home from work.

Those six words have to be the most accurate and telling words that Donald has ever spoken about football, because an edge rusher stout enough to dominate inside is exactly what Donald is.


Donald before last Sunday’s game against the Cardinals. (Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images)
“I think I’ve opened some doors about the position since I came into this league,” he said. “When I was drafted, I wasn’t that 6-4, 300-pound interior lineman everyone was looking for. I was 6-1, 280 … but really I played at 265. I heard it all: You ain’t big enough. You can’t be an interior defensive lineman in this league at 265.

“I think what people forget is, my sophomore year at Pitt, I played the edge. I played 5-technique. (A 5-technique defensive end plays just outside the shoulder of the tackle and has to be powerful against the run as well as a good rusher.) And I played pretty well. So if I had to do it now, I think I could do it. I don’t know how successful I’d be, but I know I could it.”

Donald would be pretty damn good. But the shorter path to the quarterback fits his quickness and power like no other player in football—outside or inside. One more Next Gen Stats piece of gold: Since NGS began compiling stats in 2016, he has 458 quarterback pressures, 86 more than any other defensive player in football.

There are other Taylor/Donald things to consider. Donald, entering the Rams game at San Francisco tonight, is averaging .77 sacks per game in his 130-game career, rushing mostly from the inside; Taylor averaged .77 sacks per game in his 184-game career, rushing largely from the outside. Donald had two fourth-quarter sacks, critical plays, in his lone Super Bowl win over Cincinnati. Taylor had no sacks in either of the Giants’ Super Bowl wins he played in. That matters, but it’s not huge.

Both play angry. I once saw Taylor, in a replacement game in 1987, try to gouge the eyes of a Buffalo tackle who’d consistently played him dirty. In August, I saw Donald rip off the helmet of teammate Ron Havenstein in a camp brawl and hurl it in the air. Not a good trait, obviously, but indicative that even in practice Donald plays with intensity. Their competitive streaks match.

If I had to draft one of them at 22, I’d take Donald. I can’t think in my little football world of a bigger compliment to give a defensive player than to say I’d choose him over Taylor.

Donald is not a big talker, especially about himself. But on his ride home Thursday, it was clear he knows what he’s done so far, and also that he knows he still has more greatness to chase.

“My expectation entering the league was never this,” Donald said. “It’s so hard to talk about it, honestly, hearing my named mentioned with all the greats. Hard to find the words. I’ve surpassed anything I’ve ever dreamed of, but I have so much more to do. I won’t let it all soak in till I’m finished, whenever that is.”

Donald has committed to play through the end of 2023. Selfishly, I hope there’s more.

[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com]

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RFS69