Does LSU Football Have the Next Aaron Donald On Its Roster?

In football, size has been prioritized as a key aspect of the game.

It's created a culture where size has become everything, especially for high school recruits heading off to play college football. But a lot of people forget that skill, motor and strength can come in many sizes - especially on the defensive line.

Look at former Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, a 6-foot-1, 280-pound pass rusher who took the NFL by storm.

After some recent clips of LSU freshman defensive lineman Deuce Geralds running drills in practice resurfaced, he's drawn some comparisons to the former Pittsburgh Panthers pass rusher.

The Comparison of a Lifetime

LSU Tigers Football: Deuce Geralds. — Courtesy of Deuce Geralds via Instagram.

Geralds was a 4-star recruit who was ranked No. 4 nationally at his position and No. 6 overall player in Georgia in Rivals' composite rankings for the 2026 class.

He's extremely underated, even coming in as the third highest-ranked defensive lineman in LSU's 2026 class, behind Louisiana's own Lamar Brown and Richard Anderson.

Anderson is 6-foot-3, 350 pounds, and is a disruptive force in the interior of the defensive line. And Brown stands at 6-foot-4, 285 pounds and is a threat on the edge and interior.

But since Geralds and Anderson enrolled at LSU for spring practice, Geralds has turned the most heads.

True Freshman Deuce Geralds looks like a problem on the D-Line 👀 pic.twitter.com/AEhuzaCnNY
— SleeperCFB (@SleeperCFB) June 22, 2026

Geralds' size is the same as Donald's, and the doubts around their games too.

Many NFL fans said year after year that Donald was too small for the trenches, and that every year when players' arms got longer and they got taller, that Donald would become unprouductive and irrelevant.

That never happened.

The Super Bowl champion, three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, 10-time Pro Bowler and member of the NFL's 2010s All-Decade Team proved them wrong every single year.

And he didn't just do it in the NFL. He was elite in college too.

Geralds has his eyes set on the same career: leave college football with the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, Chuck Bednarik Award, Lombardi Award, Outland Trophy and Bill Willis Trophy - all honors every defensive lineman dreams of earning in college.

Donald's jersey was retired in 2025, and he was named to the College Football Hall of Fame the same year.

That's what every college football player dreams of. Geralds is no different.

How Geralds Can Do That

The plan is simple: keep stacking days.

Gerald's highlight tape that has been circulating shows him notablly beating Aliou Bah, a 6-foot-5 guard with 24 career starts and over 1,500 collegiate snaps, while only allowing two sacks; William Satterwhite II, who hasn't allowed a single sack in over 200 snaps at Tennessee; Bo Bordelon, a 6-foot-6, 305-pound fifth-year senior and Braelin Moore, a fifth-year senior who has over 2,500 career snaps with only four career sacks allowed.

The list is long, and experienced, and Geralds has shown an ability to explode past bigger, more experienced and more polished competition.

And he's shown that with just a few weeks of coaching from one of college football's greatest defensive line coaches, Sterling Lucas.

Now, a highlight tape is exactly that: it shows the highs. But Geralds has shown a motor and ability to learn unlike any other frehsman throughout spring practices.

Following in Donald's footsteps will take continued effort. And more time with Lucas, other freshman linemen and the veterans in the building, Geralds will only get better.

Geralds' early flashes have proven him worthy of playing time this season and show promise that he can be a disruptive member of LSU's loaded defensive line for a long time.

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