Aaron Donald Provides a Test Case in Modern Situational Warfare at the NFL Level

The Rams built one of the best on-paper teams the NFL has ever seen—then convinced arguably the greatest defensive lineman in league history to come out of retirement Sunday at age 35 to tag along. And in case you missed the shots of Aaron Donald working out, he is not a human 35. Not a Tommy Copper-wearing, Bengay-smelling, lie-about-high-school-stuff 35. He is not even LeBron, I’ve-slept-in-a-chamber-full-of-oxygen-and-teenager-blood 35.

Watching a well-rested Donald is like watching a bear shake off the sleepy eyes of hibernation, chase down an animal half its size and devour it in a single bite. I imagine games in which the combination of Donald and Myles Garrett will be utterly unblockable, especially at a time when offensive line attrition is higher than ever, and most NFL coaches expect to face at least one true backup offensive lineman every week of the season. Smart teams have invested in defensive line play over the past two years. The Rams simply traveled to the source and bought up the entire damn supply. As we see what kind of prices any effective every-down defensive linemen are bringing this offseason (the Buccaneers caved to Vita Vea’s contractual demands, the Bengals traded the 10th pick for a 29-year-old Dexter Lawrence II, and the Eagles paid $40 million to Jalen Carter), this large of a market position is incredibly significant. Especially, again, at a time when coaches around the NFL suspect O-line depth is thin and even the talent of its frontline starters is not all that great.

And we can keep talking about this as if the tandem is some cryptic new—maybe already existing?—form of Artificial Intelligence that will absolutely kill us now that it has access to our daily routines, bank account information, addresses and the deepest-rooted desires of our spouses and children, but doomerism is not productive. We should view this apocalypse through a practical lens and ask what it actually means beyond the headline. Don’t worry, it’s still bone-chilling.

Donald provides a fascinating test case in modern situational warfare at the NFL level. Yes, the Rams are paying him at least $20 million for the 2026 season and would theoretically like to get $20 million worth of football out of him. But Donald is so good, so established, so above the typical day-to-day bulls--- that the Rams may rest him for large swaths of the season anyway and use him only when necessary.

I have a sneaking suspicion that, as unbelievable as it is to imagine the array of stunts, games, blitzes and other smoke-and-mirrors magic that this tandem could throw at an offensive line, the Rams will be a little like the Dodgers. Your chances of showing up and seeing all the guys do all the things are far better toward the end of the season and in the playoffs than at the beginning.

Maximizing Donald will be a victory in load management, which is not all that intimidating when we remember that the other defensive linemen on the Rams are not anonymous backup singer types; they are Braden Fiske and Kobie Turner, both of whom were among the league’s best at pass rush win rate among defensive linemen. Oh, and Byron Young was third among edge rushers last year in run stop win rate. This was already the sixth-best defensive line unit against the run before the Rams went and traded for the best player on the fifth-best team against the run.

In short, the Rams can get by. And they may try to, much like the best versions of the Patriots throughout their 20-year dynasty, when the team that finished the season barely resembled the one that started it. In that case, the roster was built to be malleable, which allowed for such a drastic shapeshift schematically between September and December. In Donald’s case, it may be the Rams letting everyone know they have a death laser parked in their garage. Maybe this week is the week they finally decide to pull out the death laser and evaporate all of mankind. Maybe it’s not. Either way, opponents will spend a significant part of the week preparing for what to do about the death laser just in case the death laser can actually do what its owners claim.

That’s the beauty in all of this. As we mentioned after the Garrett trade, acquiring the sack champion put the Rams in an incredible position to gain information. Having Garrett means knowing which way an offense will slide its protection and which way it will most likely run the football most of the time. To do that, though, Garrett needs to be a significant and frequent presence on the field.

Donald is the opposite. The creeping uncertainty is the advantage, especially at a time when NFL teams have better access to tendencies and other predictive analytics than ever before. Rivals of Los Angeles are just now wrapping their collective heads around the idea of game-planning for Garrett and how to essentially live life in a max-protect offense that will prevent many receivers from getting on the field or running routes. Teams will have to decide whether it’s better to run into the teeth of one of the five best rushing defenses in the NFL or send their quarterback to pass 25-plus times in a game, every down increasing his likelihood of falling into the human equivalent of the wood chipper from Fargo.

Enter Donald and whichever chilling metaphor you’ve decided to take from this piece of writing: death laser, autonomous AI robot, whatever. The point is that he’s going to kill you, which is scary enough. Worse, we won’t know when … or exactly how.

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