Aaron Donald is Back!

Woodland Hills, CA (News4usonline) – After a two-year mini-retirement, Aaron Donald is back to wearing No.99 for the Los Angeles Rams. The three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year made the decision to unretire and come back to the team. 

Rams head coach Sean McVay is happy to see Donald back on the practice field. 

“Yeah, it is great,” McVay said during a press conference at the team’s practice facility in Woodland Hills, California. “He means a lot to me and it is way bigger than football. There’s a lot of history. There are a lot of experiences that we’ve shared, a lot of love for each other’s families.” 

“And so I know for him to want to be able to explore this and come back into the mix, it’s a real credit to the special people that he has got a chance to be around. That’s his teammates and that’s obviously his coaches and excited to start this journey,” McVay went on to say.  

Since he retired in the spring of 2024, Donald has had to watch the Rams lose in the NFC divisional round and come one game short of playing in the big game again. Now that he’s back with the team again, the Rams are overwhelmingly favorites to reach Super Bowl LXI. When you look at the personnel of the Rams across the board, there is plenty to be excited about. 

The Rams have Matthew Stafford, the league’s MVP last season, at quarterback. Throw in a pair of mercurial wide receivers in Puka Nacua and Davante Adams and add two-time Defensive Player of the Year in Myles Garrett and shut down cornerback Trent McDuffie, the Rams look as formidable as any team in the league. 

Put Donald in the mix and the Rams have the potential to have an all-time defensive unit. On paper, McVay and the Rams have wisely crafted what some people would say is a super team. The Rams could eventually prove that notion to be true, but there is still a process the team has to go through to get to that point, Donald said.  

“I think this is a complete team with me here or without me here so for me to even have the opportunity to be a part of this, be with this team, I take nothing for granted,” Donald said. “It’s a blessing to be retired from the game for two years and have the opportunity to come back and be a part of something special. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed, but I’m trying to get to that ultimate goal day-by-day, week-by-week, and just stack them days.” 

As Donald pondered his decision on whether to come back or not, he had to get clearance from his family. That meant getting the greenlight from his wife Erica and his four children. 

“Yeah, well [there were] a lot of conversations,” Donald remarked. “I think my wife played a huge part of me making this decision period, because if the wife wasn’t happy, it wasn’t going to get done. I got to make sure that the household was good, the kids were okay with it all. Then having the hard conversations, figuring things out, what I wanted to do. If I was to do it, how would we do it? My wife was on board.” 

Aside from his family, Donald also tapped into the constant conversations he’d had with McVay for better clarity. After months of speculation and jumping from one side of the aisle to the other, Donald said he came to his decision weeks ago. 

“To be honest with you, it was on and off for a while, but I think we knew about this decision about two weeks [ago],” he said. “I knew the world was saying all types of different things and nobody knew what was going on, but I knew for two weeks. Then, I talked to Sean every single week, damn near every day. We stayed in contact. I gave him all my updates, how I was feeling, how things were going.”

In making his decision to unretire, Donald did not want to rush it or come to a conclusion arbitrarily. So he took the methodical approach.

“I just wanted to take my time and make the right decision because once you choose to come back, you’re all the way back in,” quipped Donald. “You can’t be halfway in, you [have to] be all the way in it. I had to get to that point where I felt like I’m 100 percent committed to playing football again because the last two years have been amazing.”

He continued, “Building things that I’ve been building, working on what I’ve been working on, working from home, and jumping back in the fire playing football again. So I really had to sit back, think about it, not just from the physical aspect [but] from the mental aspect as well.”