Aaron Donald still hasn’t made his call, and the silence is starting to say plenty.
The Rams defensive tackle remains on the fence after two years of retirement, even though the expectation around the league still seems to be that he could eventually line up alongside Myles Garrett. For now, though, there’s been no announcement from Donald, which points to a decision that is still not final.
The timing keeps moving. At one point, the target sounded like early this week.
Then it slid to late this week. Now the weekend has arrived, and Donald still hasn’t said whether he’s in.
That delay matters because Donald isn’t just weighing a comeback in the abstract. He wants to know he’ll still be the same player if he returns. And if he does choose to come back to the Rams, he’ll have to make a judgment about whether the work he’s putting in to get football-ready will actually carry over to the practice field and, eventually, into games.
He won’t really know until he tries. That’s the bind here, and it’s why he appears to be taking all the time he thinks he needs before making a final decision.
If Donald does return, the Rams would handle his ramp-up the same way they did after the 2017 and 2018 contract-driven holdouts. But the clock is real: there are three weeks and five days left until the Week 1 game against the 49ers in Australia, and at some point there may simply not be enough time to get him ready.
The contract side also has to be sorted out. Donald has one year left on the three-year post-Super Bowl deal that was shelved when he retired, and it carries a $30 million figure. The Rams and Donald would still need to settle payment terms and an acceptable structure for 2026, if that hasn’t already been done.
For now, the reality is simple: until Donald decides to return, there’s still a chance he won’t. And as the days pass, the lack of a decision starts to function like one, at least as it relates to Week 1 and possibly Week 2 and beyond.
There is still a late path back if he wants it. Donald could wait all the way until the Tuesday after Week 13, which is the deadline for reinstatement from the reserve/retired list. That would put him back on the field just in time for the first of two matchups with the Seahawks, in Week 15.
Even with that possibility on the table, Donald is clearly in no rush. And the Rams, already the favorites to win the Super Bowl without him, don’t appear interested in pushing him toward a decision.
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