Two years after walking away, Aaron Donald is putting the pads back on. The Rams legend announced he's unretiring to rejoin Los Angeles, and the reaction across the league was less "welcome back" and more "how is this legal." Donald retired after the 2023 season as a 3-time Defensive Player of the Year, one of only 3 men in NFL history to win that award 3 times, alongside Lawrence Taylor and J.J. Watt. Now he's coming back for one more run.
HE’S BACKKKKKKK Aaron Donald has officially announced his return to football One of the greatest defensive players of our generation returns to the gridiron
The timing is not a coincidence. The Rams pulled off a blockbuster this summer, landing Myles Garrett from the Browns, and reports have Donald signing a 1-year deal worth $20 million (up to $30 million with incentives) specifically because that trade got his itch back. Garrett is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and set the NFL's single-season sack record with 23 sacks last year — meaning the Rams are now rostering 2 of the last 3 DPOY winners on the same defensive line. Nobody in the league has ever had that.
Barstool Sports summed up the offseason in one tweet, and it reads like a cheat code: unretire a legend, trade for the league's best pass rusher, and — for good measure — throw in a name that had nothing to do with any real transaction. That last part is a bit. DaeJon Love isn't a Rams acquisition; he's the guy who spent the last year getting federally charged for posing as an NFL player in a $1.3 million dating-app scam, and Barstool is just riffing on the running joke by slotting his name in next to the actual moves.
Rams offseason: -Aaron Donald comes out of retirement -Traded for Myles Garrett -Traded for DaeJon Love Just unfair
Quarterbacks are already dreading it, and the memes reflect that dread better than any highlight could. One clip going around is just a golden retriever standing next to a mess it clearly made, frozen with a guilty look — a stand-in for how a quarterback's face is going to look staring down Donald and Garrett on the same snap.
Quarterbacks seeing Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett on the same D line
None of this is happening in a vacuum, either. Dave Portnoy framed the whole spending spree as the Rams doing whatever it takes to avoid a specific fate: getting run through by the Patriots in the Super Bowl for a third time. It's a joke, but it points at the real subtext of the offseason — LA didn't just want to be good, they wanted to make sure history doesn't repeat itself.
Rams really doing anything they can not to lose 3 superbowls in a row to the Pats 😂
Beyond Garrett and Donald, the Rams also traded a first-round pick to the Chiefs for cornerback Trent McDuffie and signed him to a 4-year, $124 million extension, plus added fellow corner Jaylen Watson. That's a defense being built with one target in mind, and the whole league knows it. Whether it's enough to actually get past New England is the only question left — but on paper, nobody wants to see this front 7 across the line of scrimmage.
