Could Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett break the combined sack record of teammates this season?

Former @RamsNFL DT and Super Bowl Champ D'Marco Farr weighs in 💬 pic.twitter.com/v7GhDwM3sh

— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) August 31, 2026

Aaron Donald didn’t have to return, but Rams’ defensive reboot made it hard to say no

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7551443/2026/08/30/rams-aaron-donald-return-retirement/?unlocked_article_code=1.9lA.mXxI._kBicZ2mhMLD&source=emp_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

LOS ANGELES — Aaron Donald walked onto a grass field at the Los Angeles Rams’ practice facility wearing his No. 99 jersey, back as a player for the first time since the 2023 season. He had a quick conversation with Matthew Stafford, began to stretch and let reality wash over him like rays of sunlight.

“It felt weird coming in and knowing that I’m an actual football player,” Donald said after practice. “Obviously, I’m always around, but to be like, ‘OK, I’m on the team,’ it felt a little weird for me.”

The return for this three-time Defensive Player of the Year is finally happening, after months of conversations and social media rumors, after talking to coach Sean McVay “damn near every single day,” and after what Donald called 14 weeks of training and thinking in an NFL mindset again.

Donald is back on a one-year, $20 million contract with incentives that could increase his pay to as much as $30 million, a league source told The Athletic on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to share those details publicly. And on Sunday, the day NFL rosters were trimmed to 53 players, Donald was back to launching his power into a blocking sled in individual drills.

Last fall, when Donald visited the facility the week the Rams were set to honor him during a Sunday night game, he said he felt no itch to return to football. He was comfortable in his new and growing media career, with a wife and children who were growing up with their father always around.

That was then.

The temptations began when the Rams’ offseason took off like a rocket ship this spring. First came Stafford’s announcement that he would return for an 18th season, fresh off winning his first MVP award. Then came a blockbuster trade for two-time All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie and the signing of his Kansas City Chiefs running mate, Jaylen Watson, to play outside cornerback.

And then the Rams pulled off another blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Browns for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, fresh off an NFL-record 23-sack season.

“That was a huge part,” Donald said. “Talking about the D-line room, you’ve got the interior guys and then you have B.Y. (Byron Young) and guys like Myles Garrett out here. I already thought it was a stacked D-line with (Jared) Verse, and then things transpired and you bring in a guy like Myles Garrett, a generational talent, and it’s like, that could be fun.

“Obviously, with what they did on the back end with bringing certain pieces to the secondary, I think this is a complete team with me or without me here.”

So Donald ramped up the workouts that have been circulating on social media since he retired. He reconnected with the speed trainer he’s worked with since high school. He started working the movements again and recording them all — “every cut, every hip flip,” he said — and saw something more than what was left in the tank when he retired. That’s also what his teammate Desjuan Johnson saw when the two worked out together for ladder and speed drills at the team facility this month.

“It feels like he even got a little bit faster, a little bit hungrier in a way,” the defensive end said.

Rams players and coaches encouraged Donald to come back in the spring. But come training camp, they left the process up to him.

“He doesn’t have to do this,” McVay said. “What he’s done throughout the 10 years, and I’ve watched him pour every ounce of his soul into this game and into his teammates. When you care as much and when you pour as much into it, that’s when you can say, ‘I’m full, and I’m complete after 10 years.’”

He didn’t have to do this, but a part of him couldn’t say no. That’s the place he arrived at two weeks ago, with his wife’s blessing and a season approaching with all the potential it could offer a roster like this one.

“The Super Bowl being back at SoFi (Stadium) kind of excites you, too,” Donald said.

Donald, of course, strengthened his legacy the last time SoFi Stadium hosted the Super Bowl following the 2021 season, when he pressured Joe Burrow into a fourth-down incompletion to seal a 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals to help the Rams win the Lombardi Trophy.

He isn’t looking at that highlight, his 111 career sacks or eight first-team All-Pro selections as a past version of him.

“Do I feel like I can play at a high level? Yes. Do I feel like I can still be myself? One hundred percent,” Donald said. “If I didn’t feel like that, I wouldn’t be here. … If anything, it’s just getting back on the grass and knocking the rust off as far as playing football again, 11-on-11, working my eyes, getting my feel for the game, certain reactions and things that made me who I am.”

That’s the process Donald will undergo now. He participated in just individual drills Sunday, and he’ll need time to fit into a defensive line that has practiced for the past five weeks with Garrett and Young on the edges and a mix of Kobie Turner, Poona Ford and Braden Fiske on the interior.

They’ll certainly make room for Donald, but they’re not forcing the timeline, as his status for the Week 1 trip to Melbourne, Australia, to play the San Francisco 49ers is currently up in the air.

But he didn’t come back to be just a part-time investment, either. That’s why it took 14 weeks of workouts and flying a speed trainer to Los Angeles, and it’s why the Rams will pay him at least $20 million to complete their offseason overhaul.

“Once you choose to come back, you’re all the way back in,” Donald said. “You can’t be halfway in it. You have to be all the way in it.”

Now is the time to work, but it’s also the time to dream. Soon enough, Donald will be sharing a defensive line with Garrett. It’ll mark the first time in NFL history that one team has featured two players with at least 100 career sacks and a 20-sack season in their careers.

“We’re teammates now,” Donald said with a smile. “Hopefully we can do some special things together.”

Benjamin Royer@thebenroyer
I asked Sean McVay about placing OLs Keagen Trost (hamstring) and Justin Dedich (hand) on the IR.

“They’re not quite ready yet. Maybe they’d be ready before Week 4, but we felt like there was some guys that were more than capable of, you know, really earning the roster spot.”

from Albert Breer’s Takeaways: How the Rams Could Deploy Aaron Donald This Season — https://www.si.com/nfl/albert-breer-takeaways-how-rams-could-proceed-with-aaron-donald-2026#inline-text-106

The Rams and Aaron Donald (finally!) have consummated their 2026 marriage. To celebrate that—this is a win for all of us on the outside because what a story it is—I figured we’d hit you with a what-you-need-to-know checklist on the return of the three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year.

• The Contract: All right, so this is a common-sense deal that recognizes Donald for who he is without busting the Rams’ budget. The starting point, of course, was his original contract, which is in its final year. He had been due $30 million, but that number was knocked down to the league minimum when he retired, for cap purposes. So when he’s reinstated, he’ll come back on the minimum, meaning the Rams won’t have to move things around cap-wise.

The old contract will then be replaced with a new deal. Donald will get $10 million in base pay and another $10 million in 53-man-roster bonuses ($666,667 per game, maxing out at 15 games, which allows him to miss a couple as part of a ramp-up). Then there’s another $10 million in playing time/playoff incentives. The playing time triggers are very achievable, even if Donald is in a rotation. Getting all the way back to $30 million requires a Super Bowl, but if the Rams are just really good again, Donald should get to $25 million.

• The ramp-up: As we’ve said before, coach Sean McVay and Donald are very close and have worked out a detailed plan (Giff Smith has spearheaded some of it) to get him ready. Part of it was Donald working at the Rams’ facility in Woodland Hills, even while the team was an hour south at Loyola Marymount. The goal was to ensure Donald felt like he could be himself, and the NFL’s rules required the team to report those when he put on a helmet.

The next steps are borrowed off the team’s experience ramping up Donald when he was coming off holdouts in 2017 and ’18. Though he wasn’t coming off two years of retirement, those years he reported on Sept. 8 and Aug. 31, respectively, so there are similarities timeline-wise.

I don’t know whether he’ll play in Australia, but I don’t know that the Rams do, either.

• The deployment: The Rams are loaded on the defensive front. They have Myles Garrett, Byron Young and Josaiah Stewart on the edge, Poona Ford and Tyler Davis at nose tackle and now Donald joining Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske. That’s a tarrying level of top-end talent—and an eye-popping level of depth.

That should allow the Rams to be judicious with Donald over the course of the season. My sense is the plan would be to play him 30-40 snaps per game, which is a lot less than he played in his prime. I know how confident the staff is in him, but he’s also 35, and it’s a long year. And that’s why I kept asking if he might delay his return to October or November. The answer I got back every time was that Donald wanted to be a part of the journey in full.

Fulfilling that desire while trying to make sure he can get to the finish line at full speed at his age could be a bit of a tricky dance. And we’ve seen these things evolve in time where it just becomes impossible to keep the star off the field. But I do think the Rams are going to try to be smart, and McVay’s relationship with Donald should help in that regard.

I can’t wait to see what this looks like. Again, just the chance to see it makes the rest of us, as football fans, winners in this equation. Unless, of course, you’re rooting for one of the Rams’ rivals.

Guys I;m glad made the practice squad, based on what I saw of them in the pre-season:

CB Cam Lampkin
OLB Darryl Peterson III
OL Austin Blaske
TE Dan Villari
WR Brennan Presley
RB Dean Connors

from https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/rams-sign-17-players-practice-204151530.html

Rams 2026 practice squad

S Nick Andersen

WR Alex Bachman (veteran)

OL Austin Blaske

P Jack Bouwmeester (international)

RB Dean Connors

CB Nyzier Fourqurean

OL Blake Hance (veteran)

S Tanner Ingle

DT Tim Keenan III

CB Cam Lampkin

DL Larrell Murchison (veteran)

ILB Elias Neal

DL Bill Norton

OLB Darryl Peterson III

WR Brennan Presley

TE Dan Villari

RB Jordan Waters

Albert Breer@AlbertBreer
The depth of the Rams’ defensive front is what’s staggering …

• Myles Garrett, Byron Young, Josaiah Stewart on the edge.

• Aaron Donald, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske as attacking interior d-linemen.

• Poona Ford and Tyler Davis as capable run-stuffing nose tackles.

***

"Myles Garrett, Aaron Donald, Poona Ford, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske, Byron Young" @wyche89 listing off the @RamsNFL D-lineman 🫪 pic.twitter.com/r4dW4OnvIU

— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) August 31, 2026

I have been saying for a while now that I think Rams will be a lot more defensively multiple than they even look on paper. Most players can do a ton of different things.

Add in a dude who won’t be easy to plan for anyway, now in a role in which volume is tough to predict…😳 pic.twitter.com/Z0oC5XcPSm

— Jourdan Rodrigue (@JourdanRodrigue) August 31, 2026

***

Here they start with the Rams and cover them for a fair bit. It all involves Donald.

…

Aaron Donald didn’t have to return, but Rams’ defensive reboot made it hard to say no

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7551443/2026/08/30/rams-aaron-donald-return-retirement/?unlocked_article_code=1.9lA.mXxI._kBicZ2mhMLD&source=emp_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

LOS ANGELES — Aaron Donald walked onto a grass field at the Los Angeles Rams’ practice facility wearing his No. 99 jersey, back as a player for the first time since the 2023 season. He had a quick conversation with Matthew Stafford, began to stretch and let reality wash over him like rays of sunlight.

“It felt weird coming in and knowing that I’m an actual football player,” Donald said after practice. “Obviously, I’m always around, but to be like, ‘OK, I’m on the team,’ it felt a little weird for me.”

The return for this three-time Defensive Player of the Year is finally happening, after months of conversations and social media rumors, after talking to coach Sean McVay “damn near every single day,” and after what Donald called 14 weeks of training and thinking in an NFL mindset again.

Donald is back on a one-year, $20 million contract with incentives that could increase his pay to as much as $30 million, a league source told The Athletic on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to share those details publicly. And on Sunday, the day NFL rosters were trimmed to 53 players, Donald was back to launching his power into a blocking sled in individual drills.

Last fall, when Donald visited the facility the week the Rams were set to honor him during a Sunday night game, he said he felt no itch to return to football. He was comfortable in his new and growing media career, with a wife and children who were growing up with their father always around.

That was then.

The temptations began when the Rams’ offseason took off like a rocket ship this spring. First came Stafford’s announcement that he would return for an 18th season, fresh off winning his first MVP award. Then came a blockbuster trade for two-time All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie and the signing of his Kansas City Chiefs running mate, Jaylen Watson, to play outside cornerback.

And then the Rams pulled off another blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Browns for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, fresh off an NFL-record 23-sack season.

“That was a huge part,” Donald said. “Talking about the D-line room, you’ve got the interior guys and then you have B.Y. (Byron Young) and guys like Myles Garrett out here. I already thought it was a stacked D-line with (Jared) Verse, and then things transpired and you bring in a guy like Myles Garrett, a generational talent, and it’s like, that could be fun.

“Obviously, with what they did on the back end with bringing certain pieces to the secondary, I think this is a complete team with me or without me here.”

So Donald ramped up the workouts that have been circulating on social media since he retired. He reconnected with the speed trainer he’s worked with since high school. He started working the movements again and recording them all — “every cut, every hip flip,” he said — and saw something more than what was left in the tank when he retired. That’s also what his teammate Desjuan Johnson saw when the two worked out together for ladder and speed drills at the team facility this month.

“It feels like he even got a little bit faster, a little bit hungrier in a way,” the defensive end said.

Rams players and coaches encouraged Donald to come back in the spring. But come training camp, they left the process up to him.

“He doesn’t have to do this,” McVay said. “What he’s done throughout the 10 years, and I’ve watched him pour every ounce of his soul into this game and into his teammates. When you care as much and when you pour as much into it, that’s when you can say, ‘I’m full, and I’m complete after 10 years.’”

He didn’t have to do this, but a part of him couldn’t say no. That’s the place he arrived at two weeks ago, with his wife’s blessing and a season approaching with all the potential it could offer a roster like this one.

“The Super Bowl being back at SoFi (Stadium) kind of excites you, too,” Donald said.

Donald, of course, strengthened his legacy the last time SoFi Stadium hosted the Super Bowl following the 2021 season, when he pressured Joe Burrow into a fourth-down incompletion to seal a 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals to help the Rams win the Lombardi Trophy.

He isn’t looking at that highlight, his 111 career sacks or eight first-team All-Pro selections as a past version of him.

“Do I feel like I can play at a high level? Yes. Do I feel like I can still be myself? One hundred percent,” Donald said. “If I didn’t feel like that, I wouldn’t be here. … If anything, it’s just getting back on the grass and knocking the rust off as far as playing football again, 11-on-11, working my eyes, getting my feel for the game, certain reactions and things that made me who I am.”

That’s the process Donald will undergo now. He participated in just individual drills Sunday, and he’ll need time to fit into a defensive line that has practiced for the past five weeks with Garrett and Young on the edges and a mix of Kobie Turner, Poona Ford and Braden Fiske on the interior.

They’ll certainly make room for Donald, but they’re not forcing the timeline, as his status for the Week 1 trip to Melbourne, Australia, to play the San Francisco 49ers is currently up in the air.

But he didn’t come back to be just a part-time investment, either. That’s why it took 14 weeks of workouts and flying a speed trainer to Los Angeles, and it’s why the Rams will pay him at least $20 million to complete their offseason overhaul.

“Once you choose to come back, you’re all the way back in,” Donald said. “You can’t be halfway in it. You have to be all the way in it.”

Now is the time to work, but it’s also the time to dream. Soon enough, Donald will be sharing a defensive line with Garrett. It’ll mark the first time in NFL history that one team has featured two players with at least 100 career sacks and a 20-sack season in their careers.

“We’re teammates now,” Donald said with a smile. “Hopefully we can do some special things together.”

Zooey wrote:

They just wanted to get rid of Atwell’s contract?

Atwell’s contract is only 1.4 M.

Odds are they are gambling that they can get Hunter through waivers and on to the practice squad. That’s the only thing I can think of.

Cameron DaSilva@camdasilva
Wesley Bailey made the Rams’ 53-man roster after a dominant preseason, which included a 10-pressure game against the Saints.

Ian (Rams Up Podcast)@RamsUp_Ian
No big surprises for the #Rams 53 Man Roster.

Trost is on I.R. List,
Dedich is on P.U.P List,
Which is why you don’t see them on the Roster currently.

In 2023, the Rams were getting their edge rushers on an island by using Aaron Donald as a looper on passing downs. That's a terrifying proposition now that it's Myles Garrett coming off the edge. pic.twitter.com/Val48VPCDw

— Steven Ruiz (@theStevenRuiz) August 30, 2026

Aaron Donald’s back.

…

Zooey, WV…

there’s a thread.

Donald’s back (official)