Aaron Donald was back on a Los Angeles Rams practice field Friday — not as a visitor, but as a participant. TMZ’s Michael Babcock reported that Donald spent roughly an hour Friday afternoon going through drills at the team’s facility and, in Babcock’s telling, looked gassed walking off. Rams On SI’s Blaine Grisak, relaying the report Saturday, called it the biggest sign yet that the comeback talk is more than talk.
The trail has been building all offseason. ESPN’s Adam Schefter said earlier this month that a Donald return was “more likely than not,” with the veteran-report date of July 25 as the natural decision point. Earlier this week, Donald was filmed giving pass-rush pointers to Steelers safety Jaquan Brisker — in a Rams shirt. Each item on its own is deniable. A private hour of drills at your old employer’s facility two weeks before camp is the kind of thing you do when you’re finding out what your body has left, not when you’re staying retired.
The ‘gassed’ detail is the honest part of the report, and it’s worth sitting with rather than spinning. Donald retired after the 2023 season and turned 35 in May. Nobody, including the Rams, should expect the player who won three Defensive Player of the Year awards to reappear intact. But that was never the proposition. The Rams traded for Myles Garrett this offseason, and the roster around a returning Donald would ask him to be a rotational interior disruptor on a Super Bowl favorite — not the entire identity of a defense, the job he held the last time he wore the uniform. On a snap count next to Garrett, even a diminished Donald changes how offenses have to slide protection. That’s the value case, and it doesn’t require nostalgia to close.
What’s next: veterans report July 25, and every indication is that Donald wants this settled one way or the other by then rather than midseason. Until he files reinstatement paperwork or says otherwise, this remains a workout and a report — but the workouts keep happening at one particular address.
