(Ed. note: Aaron Donald was ruled out for Sunday’s game against the Eagles with a back injury, ESPN reported on Friday afternoon).
Two and a half years after he first announced his retirement, Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald decided he wasn’t finished wreaking havoc against NFL offenses.
Donald, 35, officially came out of retirement on Aug. 30, signing a one-year, $20 million contract to return to his former club of 10 years. The three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, eight-time All-Pro, 10-time Pro Bowl interior defensive lineman figured to team up with similarly decorated edge rusher Myles Garrett, whom the Rams acquired from the Cleveland Browns in June.
Four weeks into the season, the Rams defensive front won’t be at full strength in Sunday’s game against the Eagles. Garrett is on injured reserve while recovering from knee surgery. Donald, meanwhile, has been back in action for the last two games following a three-week ramp-up period.
Still, led by Donald, tackle Kobie Turner, and outside linebacker Byron Young, the Rams defensive line will pose a challenge to the recently reconfigured Eagles offensive line. Although Donald was away from football for the last two seasons, he hasn’t lost a step, according to Cam Jurgens.
“It’s like Michael Jordan quitting to go play some baseball,” said Jurgens, who has shifted from center to left guard in the absence of the injured Landon Dickerson. “He comes back, he’s still Michael Jordan.”
But even the Jordan of the NFL hasn’t shot 100%. Through 156 career regular-season games, the 6-foot-1, 280-pound Donald has recorded 111 sacks, compiled against all but two teams — the Eagles and the New York Jets.
On Sunday, Donald will seek his first sack since his NFL return and the first sack of his career in his sixth game against the Eagles, so long as he is healthy enough to play after missing practice Wednesday and Thursday with a sore back. The Eagles offensive line, which has the fourth-best pass-block win rate in the league through three games (58%), according to ESPN, will be tasked with preventing him from adding another feather to his cap.
The Eagles could catch a break if Donald can’t take the field. But even before the Rams added Garrett and Donald this offseason, Tyler Steen acknowledged that they still had a “really good” defensive front.
Regardless, the Eagles are preparing as if Donald will play, and for good reason.
“He can ruin the run game, he can ruin the pass game, and if you don’t formulate a plan, you’re cooked,” Jordan Mailata said.
‘Four hands’ on Donald
Mailata remembers well the week of preparation leading up to the Eagles’ Week 5 matchup against the Rams in 2023.
That was the last time that the Eagles faced Donald, who was 32 at the time and would go on to lead Rams’ interior defensive linemen that year with a 12.9% pressure rate. Whenever the Eagles played a premier player like Donald, coach Jeff Stoutland and the Eagles offensive line would devote extra time to game-planning against them.
“We spend so much time on making sure that they don’t wreck the game, because they’re game wreckers,” Mailata said. “So there was a lot of detail involved in understanding, especially with Coach Stout and how he [was] very anal on the details and the small things, making sure that there were four hands on him, and if we could get six hands, we could get six hands.”
The more hands and eyes on Donald, the better. The plan the Eagles devised wasn’t novel. That season, he faced double teams on over 60% of his pass-rush snaps during the regular season, according to ESPN.
He would still find ways to make the most of his reps, even when he had at least two sets of hands on him. By the end of the regular season, Donald generated 17 pressures against double teams, which was tied for sixth-most in the league, per Next Gen Stats.
But in Week 5 of that season, the Eagles kept Donald out of the major categories on the stat sheet in their 23-14 win over the Rams. They accomplished that feat with backup right guard Sua Opeta starting in place of the injured Jurgens. Rarely was Donald ever isolated against any single Eagles offensive lineman. Especially when Donald lined up against Opeta, either Jason Kelce at center or Lane Johnson at right tackle were on standby to help block him.
Donald finished with a 2.9% pressure rate, which would end up being his second-lowest of the year, according to Next Gen Stats.
While lined up over left guard Landon Dickerson, Donald was credited with a quarterback pressure, setting up the lone sack that Jalen Hurts took that day at the hands of Rams outside linebacker Zach VanValkenburg (although Hurts held on to the ball for roughly six seconds before taking the sack).
“We [came] into work that year and that season, and we knew what time it was,” Mailata said. “The coaches did a great job of formulating the plan, making sure that we’re all on the same page on the protection. And so after that, it’s all about executing.”
A new-look O-line against a familiar foe
As Mailata watched Donald’s most recent game against the Denver Broncos, he noticed that Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula will move him around the line of scrimmage, from right guard to left guard. But as Donald continues to get acclimated to game action, Mailata noted that the Rams could decide to line the prototypical “3-technique” over the center on occasion.
“This could be the week,” Mailata said.
After all, Donald is set to face three young, relatively inexperienced interior offensive linemen he has never faced in Jurgens, Steen and center Drew Kendall. Jurgens is on the cusp of starting his third career game at left guard, where he has conceded a total of 11 pressures on 73 pass-blocking snaps (15.1%), per Next Gen Stats.
The group managed to prevent Tennessee Titans All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons from completely wrecking the game. Can they do the same to Donald? Jurgens asserted the offensive line’s success on Sunday has less to do with game-planning against a specific player and more to do with looking inward.
“How can you get better in your technique and be sound and complete with everything?” Jurgens said. “A lot of times, you look at somebody, jersey number, and you change how to block them. You’ve got to worry about your own technique and whenever you have a stud like that, you just want to get four hands and four eyes on him as much as you can.”
Mailata said new offensive line coach Chris Kuper has taken a “pretty similar” approach to game-planning against Donald as the Eagles have in the past. He has been detailed while conveying what the protection unit is trying to achieve in any given situation. Steen said any great player requires a little extra attention.
The plan itself, though, won’t be exactly the same as it was in 2023. Steen acknowledged that it won’t be possible to double-team Donald all the time, as it can mess up the integrity of the protection as a whole.
“There’s some plays that he’s just going to be one-on-one,” Steen said. “We’re going to have to find a way to block him up and execute.”
But Mailata said regardless of the plan, it’s on the players to execute, especially in the less familiar realm of the outside zone run-blocking scheme at the root of Sean Mannion’s offense.
Mailata said the Eagles offense laid a “great foundation” for the outside zone game in the first half of Monday’s loss to the Chicago Bears. According to Sumer Sports, Saquon Barkley amassed 61 yards on seven outside-zone carries (+.38 expected points added per rush) before the offense was hampered by negative plays and penalties in the second half.
“That’s going to help us so much heading into this week, because they have to protect against it,” Mailata said. “They have to plan for that, and so we just have to do a better job at … not being frazzled or scared about the defense of what’s going to happen and what if, just execute, put your head down, and run.”
In theory, the more successful the Eagles are running the ball on early downs, the less likely they’ll see Donald on the field. He played 33 defensive snaps in Week 2 against the Giants (56.9%) and 35 in Week 3 against the Broncos (52.2%). Donald’s missed snaps have primarily been on early downs — he has been on the field for 24 of 27 third-down snaps over the last two weeks (88.9%), per Next Gen Stats.
Kendall is hesitant to believe that the Rams are only going to utilize Donald in select situations for the rest of the season, however.
“For all we know, he’s probably gearing up to play a full game against us,” Kendall said. “So we’ve just got to be ready for whatever happens this week, and we have to be prepared for him to be out there on every snap.”
On paper, Donald hasn’t been as effective as he was when he last played in 2023. He mustered a single pressure on 18 and 24 pass rushes in Weeks 2 and 3, respectively, after generating multiple pressures in 89 out of 92 games played from 2018 to 2023. He hasn’t been on the field as much, though, playing 54% of the defensive snaps over the last two weeks compared to well over 80% in that same previous span.
Still, that doesn’t mean the future Hall of Famer isn’t capable of turning on the jets, especially as he works his way back into playing shape.
“Until he decides to stop, he’ll continue to be what he’s been,” Hurts said. “A lot of respect for him.”
