Aaron Donald’s return to game action started with a familiar flash of energy and a reminder that even the greats need a little time to shake off the rust.
Before Monday night’s game at SoFi Stadium, Donald was introduced as the final defensive starter to the home crowd, and the place responded. He said that reaction “kind of amped me up a little bit” as he took the field for the first time since deciding to end the retirement that began after the 2023 season. Donald didn’t travel to Australia for the opener, and the Rams gave him extra time to build himself back up before putting him in the lineup.
Once the game started, he finished with three tackles and a tackle for loss while playing 33 of the team’s 58 defensive snaps. Donald said he wants to win “a little faster” when he’s isolated one-on-one, and he expects the game to feel more natural as he gets more reps.
“The game really wasn’t as fast as I thought,” Donald said, via the team’s website. “It was more of me calming myself down, overrunning stuff or just my feet not being in the ground how they supposed to be, not trusting my eyes, little stuff like that.
But playing the game, when I held out in ’17, ’18 it was the same way when I came back, it took a couple games to get going. It’s a little different.
I ain’t played in two years, so I gotta watch the film, see what I did good, see what I did wrong, and just clean it up.”
The Rams had planned to pair Donald with Myles Garrett, but Garrett’s knee injury has pushed that idea back for now. For the time being, the focus is on Donald getting back to the level that made him a three-time defensive player of the year.
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