Aaron Donald Is Un-Retiring at 35 Because the Rams Traded for Myles Garrett, and Now L.A. Has Two Defensive Players of the Year on One Line

Aaron Donald hadn’t played a snap since January 2024. Then the Rams went out and got Myles Garrett, and suddenly retirement stopped making sense to him.

Call it what it is: a three-time Defensive Player of the Year looking at a front office that just handed him a Hall of Fame running mate and deciding the couch wasn’t worth it anymore. Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport broke the news together:

A one-year deal worth $20 million, with incentives that can push it to $30 million, per CBS Sports. Two years away from football, at 35, at the most physically demanding position on the field. That’s the bet.

The trade that started it happened back in June, when the Rams sent Jared Verse and three draft picks to Cleveland for Garrett. Donald wasn’t shy about the effect it had on him. “It for sure got me thinking,” he said, which is about as close as Donald gets to admitting he’d been sitting at home watching tape on a defensive front he suddenly wanted a piece of. Once he was back in the building, the framing shifted from hypothetical to real. Donald told ESPN he considers Garrett a teammate now, saying “hopefully we do some special things together.”

Donald has three DPOY awards. Garrett has two. Between them: 17 Pro Bowls, 13 First-Team All-Pro nods, and 111 regular-season sacks for Donald alone, plus a Super Bowl ring from the 2021 season. That’s the first time two multiple-time DPOY winners have ever shared a defensive line. Not a division. A line. Rapoport laid out exactly who else is on it:

Braden Fiske, Poona Ford, Kobie Turner, and Byron Young were already a promising young front before any of this. Now they’ve got a 35-year-old with three DPOY trophies rounding out the room.

None of that means Donald walks back into the lineup Week 1. Sean McVay wouldn’t commit to it when he was asked directly, saying only, “Haven’t even gotten into all of that.” Albert Breer reported that McVay and Donald have worked out a detailed plan for bringing him back in stages rather than throwing a 35-year-old straight into snap counts after two years off. Donald didn’t practice Monday, and that absence was reportedly part of the plan, not a red flag. Still worth sitting with: recovery windows for players this age usually get measured in months. Donald’s is being measured in years.

That’s the part that keeps this from being a straight hype story. A two-year layoff isn’t a hamstring tweak. Explosiveness off the snap is the first thing to go for interior defensive linemen once they hit their mid-30s, and Donald is trying to find his after 24 months of doing something other than playing NFL football. The incentive structure of his contract — a $10 million gap between base value and the max payout — suggests the Rams built this deal assuming he earns the bigger number through playoff performance, not guaranteed reps.

There’s also a quieter cost. Every season Donald plays pushes his Hall of Fame eligibility clock back, since it only starts once a player is fully retired. He’s choosing to delay his own bronze bust for a shot at doing this with Garrett next to him. For a player with nothing left to prove statistically, that’s not nothing.

This is also a guy picking his own spot, not getting stuck in one. Compare that to Deshaun Watson’s ongoing battle with Cleveland’s fanbase, where the boos showed up whether he wanted them there or not. Donald walked away from football on his own terms two years ago. Coming back for Garrett was his choice too.

Whether the Rams’ defensive front lives up to the hype nobody’s earned yet is a fall-and-winter question. Donald deciding two DPOY trophies on one line beat one more year of retirement is already a February-in-August story, and the Rams didn’t have to trade for it twice.