Aaron Donald’s Life at the Top

His legacy as an all-time great secured, the Rams superstar savored a Super Bowl victory—even as a decision on his future loomed.

The championship parade covered only 1.1 miles. But as Aaron Donald danced, drank, roared, blew kisses and flexed his cartoonish muscles, his mind drifted beyond the raucous celebration. As thousands screamed and chanted at the six double-decker buses carrying the jovial superstar and his Rams teammates, they rolled away from the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, snaking along Figueroa Street, inching toward the Coliseum.

Donald bounced and sipped and hugged along the route, his gold chain and diamond-studded “99” pendant flopping from neck to chin. So much had aligned to make the party possible. Stay in the moment, he reminded himself. He wished to remember the details of that day forever, so he waved away potential distractions such as his future, the subject of an endless discussion. Retire or return?

He was certain of only one thing that afternoon, a private tradition of sorts he planned to show a wider audience. “I get a little tipsy and take my shirt off,” he says. “That’s what I do.”

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

On Feb. 16, three days after the Rams’ victory in Super Bowl LVI, Donald wore a black T-shirt that wasn’t tight and yet somehow revealed all eight of his abs. Still, if anyone missed them, Donald soon provided an unobstructed view, standing atop one bus as it wound down Figueroa and, as promised, tugging the tee off over his head.

Meanwhile, Rams fans scoured clips of the festivities, hunting for clues, signs, anything that qualified as insight. Those praying for his return saw coach Sean McVay atop a stage, goading the masses into a “run it back” chant when it came time for Donald to address them. “Why not?” the 30-year-old said in a way that seemed committal but really wasn’t—not to him then, and not when he discussed it almost a week after the parade.

At that moment, and in the days that followed, Donald transformed from the NFL’s most feared defender into the human embodiment of Disneyland. He seemed like the happiest man on Earth. He drew from the crowd’s energy, downing champagne, whiskey and cognac. He never did put the shirt back on.

In this crucible of competing emotions—“juiced” by a splendid present, reflecting on a predictive past and not yet ready to plot an undetermined future—Donald leaned in close to team owner Stan Kroenke and told him that he loved him. He shouted, “World champs!” over and over and apologized (unnecessarily) for his slurred speech.

That same week, the exultation continued unabated. Donald went on The Late Late Show With James Corden; he wore sunglasses, continued to imbibe and proved he could skip rope and throw a football through a tire (he did not fare as well in the limbo). He hosted family and friends for dinner at Delilah, the Roaring ’20s–themed hot spot in West Hollywood. He flew to Miami for Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s 45th birthday bash. And he attended his first Lakers game, sitting courtside, galvanizing the crowd and high-fiving LeBron James. The superstars met briefly afterward, and Donald is still processing what James told him: “You’re the greatest defensive player I’ve ever seen.”

For weeks, teammate Von Miller had told Donald, “There’s nothing better than football heaven,” meaning the glorious championship aftermath. As Donald basked in actual sun and metaphorical glow, he finally understood. After eight seasons, contract holdouts, a historic extension, the Rams’ move from St. Louis to L.A. and everything else, one of the greatest players in the history of football had, at last, the only accomplishment he lacked. He thought back to Pittsburgh, his hometown: the close friend who was murdered, the other friends who went to prison and the family that both sheltered and shaped him, starting with 4:30 a.m. workouts in The Dungeon—what his father, Archie, named their basement.

“I’m still living in the moment,” Donald says, nine days after the Super Bowl triumph, his words accurate and incomplete. That’s because no matter where he goes or what he does, the question strangers, teammates and James asked lingers, even in football heaven: What’s next?

A few days after winning a Super Bowl on the Rams’ home field, Donald had a chance to kick his feet up at his pool in Los Angeles :: Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

All the drama started when Donald met with NBC broadcasters during Super Bowl week. Before sitting down, he had an informal conversation with Rodney Harrison, one Donald calls “personal,” meaning between them. When the retired NFL safety joked that Donald might play 15 additional seasons, the defensive tackle responded honestly, answering for, he believed, an audience of one. “Honestly, you never know,” he responded. “This could be my last year.”

Harrison shared that sentiment on national television before the game, but Donald didn’t find out until afterward, when reporters asked him about it. “I wouldn’t expect [Harrison] to do something like that,” Donald says. “I wouldn’t want him to.” Notice what he didn’t say: that Harrison was wrong.

The rumors had spread in the days before the game. Most framed Donald’s decision as tethered to his dominance. With 98 career sacks, eight Pro Bowl nods, seven first-team All-Pro honors and three Defensive Player of the Year awards, he was already a lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Beyond a title, what else could he play for? Others ventured that his job description—clashing with multiple (and massive) blockers on almost every play—had left a physical imprint. Maybe he worried about his brain?

They were right, those rumormongers. Donald was seriously considering whether he wanted to play football anymore. But they were wrong, too, because his emotional tug-of-war wasn’t about football (beyond the time, effort and sacrifice it took him to, as McVay says, “epitomize greatness”).

This isn’t a subject that Donald wades into often, certainly not publicly. He told reporters what he told himself at the parade. He wanted to stay in the moment, enjoy the celebration. But he left out how problematic his reality had become. The same thoughts had weighed on him every day throughout the past three seasons. He even told teammates two years ago that perhaps he would step away after Year 8—the one that ended with his meaty hands raising the Lombardi Trophy toward the sky.

During a late-February phone interview, and for the first time publicly, Donald broached the true reason he is considering retirement. “I’m thinking about my kids, first, always,” he says. “People who know me understand why.”

He spoke softly, with intention. Why the honesty? Why now? “I’m a guy that shows my truth,” he responded.

And his truth is this: Donald lives in Southern California with his wife, Erica, and their son, Aaric, who was born in September. His other two children, Jaeda and Aaron Jr., spend most of the year in Pittsburgh. He can pinpoint the day he realized how deeply the distance between them would complicate his life. Jaeda, now 8 and his oldest, started first grade in 2018, and because of school and activities, she couldn’t fly out to visit as often as before. Her father won his second DPOY that season, but it wasn’t only the Rams’ loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII that left him in a “bad place mentally.” What tugged at him felt bigger, more existential, filling him with anxiety and dread.

“When I came home, I just wasn’t myself,” he says. “If my kids’ situation is not in order, my world is not in order. Honestly, it has always been about [them].”

Donald leaned on Erica throughout that summer, talking through his feelings, searching for solutions. A football force who demolishes triple teams no longer felt that indestructible. He called Jaeda and A.J. constantly and flew back east for regular visits, grateful the Rams made concessions for his schedule, freeing up the necessary time. But it wasn’t the same. “If it wasn’t for [Erica],” he says, “I don’t know where I would be mentally.”

Until this year, Donald had never taken more than three days off after a season. When he bought his parents separate new houses, he refused to let them sell his childhood home and created a “workout house” instead. He trained on weekends and holidays, when sick or sad or tired. His talent made him an elite player. But that talent, combined with sweat equity and the organizational skills of a wedding planner, transformed him into something more. He couldn’t be Aaron Donald if he didn’t prepare like Aaron Donald. But every minute spent toiling toward a Super Bowl was another minute he wasn’t spending with his children.

When retired safety Eric Weddle rejoined the Rams in January for their playoff run, he understood the thought process, having lived it. He left the NFL after 13 seasons, and not because he couldn’t play, but because “I didn’t want to go through everything the job entails.”

Weddle doesn’t believe Donald will retire now. “But there comes a point where it’s too much,” he says, “and you have to just have to let it go.”

Donald blew into the backfield and slung Joe Burrow to the turf on a fourth-and-1, clinching his first Super Bowl victory :: John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated

While rejoicing for the better part of a week in February, Donald didn’t train. Pundits wondered: Did the break reveal his intention to walk away? McVay spied Donald in the weight room the following Monday. Did the clanking signal an impending return?

Most signs point in the same direction, toward another season. But they were what others saw, not how Donald himself felt. Donald tried to push his internal conflict further out. He met with coaches and teammates to explain his thought process, the heft of his decision and why he remained torn. He believed they had been “destined to win the Super Bowl.” But as much as he loved them, he loved his children more. He wanted to be honest. And, honestly, he wasn’t sure.

“I’m truly living my dream,” he told them, meaning football heaven. Then why choose to wake up?

Sometimes, whenever he felt like quitting football, his mind drifted to McVay. Donald vividly recalls their first meeting, at the Four Seasons in Westlake Village, shortly after the 2016 season. Executives had summoned Donald to meet with his new boss, the youngest coach in NFL history, only 30 years old. Donald spied an unlined face framed by immaculate hair. “Where the hell is this dude?” he wondered, mistaking McVay for a subordinate of some sort. But as McVay laid out his ambitions, point after point revealed exactly what Donald wanted. “You hear what you want to hear,” he says, “but you never know what to really expect.”

Donald didn’t reveal to McVay, or anyone outside of his family, the conversation he had that summer with his agent. Both expected the Rams would soon begin negotiating a contract extension. “I love the organization, but I want to win,” Donald responded. “Let’s hold off.”

The 17–31 record in his first three seasons had started to impact his on-field mojo. In 2016, Donald paid $81,000 in fines—for late hits, unnecessary roughness and unsportsmanlike-conduct violations, such as slamming his helmet onto the turf. He was ejected from two games. He’s neither proud of that stretch nor surprised by the mental toll that cost him composure. “Losing is a miserable thing, man,” he says. “It don’t matter how much success you have individually. When you’re losing, the aura around you, your energy, it’s just different.”

The turning point he searched for came in early 2018, when the Rams played a postseason game for the first time since ’05. They lost to the Falcons, but that shift, from perennial losing team to potential contender, sparked a renewed energy for Donald. His adrenaline spiked before kickoff, anticipation elevating until he could hardly breathe. “My wake-up call,” he says.

He made another visit to McVay’s office the next offseason, when contract negotiations stalled once more. To his wunderkind coach, he said, “As long as you are here, I want to be part of your legacy with you. I want to play for you.”

Donald signed the extension that summer. At six years, for up to $135 million (with $87 million guaranteed), it marked the largest deal ever signed by an NFL defensive player. In that 2018 season, he netted 20.5 sacks. He also deeply missed his children. As Super Bowl LIII approached, he promised Jaeda they would celebrate in Atlanta by making confetti angels.

After the Patriots prevailed, Jaeda hugged him, but she was sobbing. “Daddy, I thought you said we would play in the confetti.”

No longer all that certain about football, the promise he had inadvertently broken propelled Donald forward. He needed a title to make good on his vow. He hadn’t yet considered what it might be like if he won that, too.

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

Donald is often reminded of a moment he’d like to forget: the end of his 2020 season, spent on the sideline in frigid Green Bay. He had tried to play through torn rib cartilage he suffered the week before but couldn’t finish. Cameras zoomed in on the tears forming in his eyes. He attempted to cover his face with a towel. “It hurt me to the core,” he says. “I blame myself. I let them down.”

He cried on the sideline. And in the shower. And the locker room. And on the flight home. He cried in the days and weeks that followed, more tears than in the rest of his life combined. A title meant that much to him, and only he knew the depth of what he had missed in his pursuit. During the season, he sometimes saw his children as little as three times a month. He missed birthdays and holidays, teeth placed under pillows and doctor appointments, plus the small, glorious moments that lend poetic beauty to the fraught and frazzled life as a parent. For what? That’s what he wondered. That’s why he cried. He was the best dad; everyone around him saw that. He seemed most comfortable around children. But being tugged in two important and opposite directions felt zero-sum; one pursuit always taking from the other. To put everything into reaching that one game and fall short every year? “You feel like a failure,” Donald says. “You gotta make football mean something. Or what’s the point?”

His angst grew this season. Not for any specific reason, but because his happiness calculus hadn’t changed. Aaric’s birth energized him, reminding Donald of his why—the three tiny humans who looked up to him. And yet, the time he spent with the baby also reminded him of the time he lost with the other kids.

Donald’s parents were visiting him in L.A. the week of the Rams’ playoff game in Tampa. They were sitting outside when he flung open the patio door. If the Rams managed to topple the Bucs that Sunday, they would, most figured, face the top-seeded Packers. Not Donald. Of course he knew as well as anyone that the Rams hadn’t beaten the 49ers since 2018. But he told his parents to root for San Francisco. He wanted to go through them. “That’s my wish,” he said, eyes narrowing, smirk vanishing into something like a glare. He shut the patio door hard enough that it rattled—“like a mic drop,” Archie says—then stalked off, missing his father’s careful-what-you-wish-for warning.

While lounging in his hotel room, Donald rooted for his division rival, yelling at the TV. When the Niners delivered the upset he desired, he went to bed “with a smile on my face.” Jaeda called before he nodded off, reminding dad of his promise. She still planned to collect.

The next three weeks unspooled “like a movie,” Donald says. Only in this film, Donald wouldn’t write scripts. He would wreck them. On the flight back from Tampa after the victory over the Bucs, Miller sat down across the aisle from him and said, “Sometimes, you just gotta talk to the guys. They watch you, and they want to [win] for you. They just want to hear Aaron say, let’s go.”

Inspired, Donald spoke up before the conference title game, reminding teammates of the relentless nature of their season, as the enthusiasm of a 7–1 start faded through a winless November. “That’s as vocal as I’ve ever seen him,” left tackle Andrew Whitworth says.

Trailing, yet again, against San Francisco, Donald gathered his teammates. “It’s got to mean something to you!” he screamed, voice cracking with urgency. “Everything we got!” He spun quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo into a game-sealing interception, then ran to the nearest end zone, scanning the stands for his parents, yelling, “I told you! I told you!” And he pointed to a finger, the one where a Super Bowl ring would make for a perfect fit.

One game stood between him and true football fulfillment. The win-one-for-Donald chorus gained momentum. But while he wanted to hoist the Lombardi Trophy more than ever, he couldn’t help but wonder. What if he triumphed, fulfilled his promise and still lived a country apart from two kids he loved more than football? Way more. Enough, perhaps, to leave the game—the one he ruled—behind.

Donald’s on-field celebration spilled over into a week of champagne-soaked, shirtless moments :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Ten days after the Super Bowl, McVay calls from Cabo San Lucas, of all places, the same vacation destination where he bumped into quarterback Matthew Stafford last winter. The Rams completed a trade for Stafford that weekend, phoning Donald via FaceTime to share the news. Donald wondered that night if he might finally secure a championship. A year and change later, they’re all wondering if the championship he won might be his final game.

Nothing looms larger than Donald’s departure—or return. His impact stretches far beyond statistics amassed, blockers occupied and schemes destroyed. McVay likes to show the Rams a video of Steph Curry. The theme: Are the habits you have today on par with the dreams you have for tomorrow? That’s Donald. “His habits every single day have been on par with putting himself in position to make a play in crunch time to win the Lombardi Trophy,” McVay says.

As the coach addressed reporters two days before the Super Bowl, he turned introspective, ruminating on stoicism, family and a healthier, more balanced existence. Donald listened to McVay and heard his own inner thoughts. When asked directly if he planned to return, McVay said only, “We’ll see.” Hearing that gave Donald chills.

Trailing Cincinnati on the last Sunday of the season, McVay needed Donald to induce chills rather than produce them. As the pass rusher chased quarterback Joe Burrow toward the sideline and shoved him out of bounds in the fourth quarter, McVay felt oddly peaceful. “Clean play,” Burrow said, as his teammates surrounded Donald and began to shove him. “You just woke me up!” Donald boomed.

The Rams surged back into the lead. McVay would later connect the next sequence to the Curry video. Donald, habits, crunch time, Lombardi Trophy. Simple as that.

Donald paced the sideline, telling teammates, “Everything you did is for this last moment. You cannot fail. Not this time. We’re not going to let this team beat us in our own stadium to win a Super Bowl. No f---ing way.” Internally, he wasn’t that unwavering. Nerves swirled, as he prayed. Please, God. Please.

Turns out, Donald didn’t make a play. He made two. On third-and-1 with 48 seconds left, he dragged down Samaje Perine by the waist inches short of a first down.

After a timeout, as the defense trotted onto the field, television cameras captured McVay speaking a sentiment into both existence and his headset. “Aaron Donald’s gonna make a play,” he said. Much would be made of his comment but McVay calls it “the least bold prediction in NFL history,” adding, “If we had the Vegas odds, I wouldn’t have made a whole lot of money.”

“Let me tell you exactly how I felt,” Donald says. He figured the Bengals would run the ball again, and he told teammates to “bow up.” But Burrow lined up in shotgun, and when Donald overheard the center communicating protections, he shouted, “Yo! They about to throw the ball!” He believed Cincy would slide its protection, which meant he had to beat his blocker off the edge. He picked his move—the chop club—before the ball snapped, because he believed it was the fastest way to reach Burrow. His blocker jumped too wide. “I was able to ping off him, to get my hands off him and push my momentum and bend fast off the edge,” Donald says. So fast, in fact, he blew by the center headed over to help. He saw Burrow pump fake and thought, there’s no way he still got the ball.

Donald spun Burrow, much like he had spun Garoppolo, and before the play even ended, the enormity had already started to sink in. As he fell, he thought, “We just won the damn Super Bowl! Same play! We did this s--- together! World champs!”

Then, a moment three years in the making. He scanned and scanned for Jaeda, as he pointed at the same finger, repeating ring me and embracing everyone in sight. When he found her, she threw clumps of confetti at him, and strands stuck to his sweaty forehead. They made the angels he had promised, then stuffed that confetti into his hat and a plastic bag. “You’re going to be the coolest kid in school,” Donald said.

He left out the drastic change he was seriously considering. Like the prospect of being there, every day, at a school in Pittsburgh, rather than across the country at the Rams’ facility, a Super Bowl hero who traded money and glory for drop-offs and pick-ups.

Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

As McVay watched The Last Dance, Michael Jordan sometimes reminded him of Donald. Not in size, or personality, but in how hard Jordan pushed everyone—especially himself. “Greatness comes with a price,” McVay says. The coach sometimes studied his star defender as a father, and when he noticed the love and attention Donald showered on his children, it confirmed how much he wanted a family of his own. He also saw the stress. “I’ve witnessed,” McVay says, “what it takes for him.”

Tom Brady also understands the toll. In an email, he describes Donald as an “impossible matchup” and a “dominant player no matter who he goes against,” who isn’t “content unless he wins every play.” There’s a cost to that approach as well. Price tag: the rest of one’s life.

So while Whitworth argues that “there’s nobody on the planet that’s ever played the game at the level [Donald] plays at,” everyone can see the internal conflict that Donald rarely voices. For now, he’s considering all options. He doesn’t rule out leaving football for a season or two and coming back, the way that Jordan did. He also doesn’t dismiss playing for multiple seasons.

If he does return, Donald wants what he asked Kroenke for at the parade. The Rams must re-sign critical players like Miller and Odell Beckham Jr. They must be positioned to make another run. More than anything, Donald says, McVay must be his coach. That seems likely, and in a private moment after the parade, he told McVay, “I was here before you and couldn’t get the job done. We need you. You can’t leave.”

In the weeks ahead, Donald will trade revelry for reflection. Retire? Or return? For now, he vacillates. Football heaven is addicting, just as Miller promised it would be. Donald already craves the attendant euphoria. He wants to rip his shirt off on a parade route next season. But what about his children who live in Pittsburgh? God, he misses them. And yet … maybe the moment when he was making confetti angels with Jaeda blended his separate worlds into perfect harmony, all the familial sacrifices traded for a shared triumph none of the Donalds will ever forget.

Those placing bets should put their money on another season. But it’s far from the certainty that has been hopefully described. Donald’s confidants believe he’s split between his choices, with plenty of thinking left. Even McVay hunted for clues. In Cabo San Lucas with his defensive coordinator, Raheem Morris, they FaceTimed once again with Donald. They had heard he was house hunting (disaster?) . . . in greater Los Angeles (relief!). They jokingly hoped Erica would find the most expensive mansion on the market, so her husband would need to work.

Donald’s dilemma can be understood in one photograph, a stunning image snapped from behind him at the parade. He’s on the stage, shirtless, of course, holding the Lombardi Trophy in his right hand. The diehards down below are screaming, sharing in his jubilance. Viewed one way, the shot looks like the pinnacle, the moment when there’s nothing left to accomplish, and it’s time for a champion to go full dad. Viewed from another angle, it’s a king standing before his kingdom, and rather than retire, he’s ready to rule.

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