Aaron Donald spent Sunday doing something retired players generally do not do. For the second time this summer, the Los Angeles Rams listed the 35-year-old defensive tackle on the NFL’s transaction wire as a workout participant, one day after the team opened its preseason with a 20-12 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
On its own, a tryout line on the league’s daily personnel report is paperwork. Attached to a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year who has spent ten weeks circling a comeback, it reads like a countdown — and the calendar behind it is getting short.
Why Donald keeps showing up on the transaction wire
Sunday’s listing is best understood as the third checkpoint in a process that has been building all summer, and the second one loud enough to require league paperwork.
Donald first tested the waters quietly. On July 10, he was spotted at the Rams’ facility for a workout that never touched the wire. Adam Schefter reported at the time that Donald simply “wanted to go there, work out, see how he felt.”
The formal step came Aug. 5, when the Rams listed him as a “tryout” player for the first time. The distinction wasn’t ceremonial — because Donald wore a helmet and used team equipment at the facility, the club was obligated to report the session to the league.
Sunday’s entry marked the second wire appearance in 11 days, and while the Rams released no details about the session itself, the pattern is the story: Each workout has been a step further into football activity, and none of them has been followed by a no.
That count matters more than it seems. Much of Sunday’s aggregation shorthanded this as Donald’s “second workout,” but the July session makes it at least his third known visit — a longer, more deliberate ramp than the shorthand suggests.
McVay’s balancing act
Sean McVay has spent the weekend walking a line between enthusiasm and patience. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times after Saturday’s preseason opener, the Rams head coach made clear the team has internal targets without a hard cutoff.
“He’s put himself in a position to be able to say yes or no,” McVay said. “I think he’s earned that right to have clarity on that. We’re not at that point quite yet.”
McVay acknowledged the team has sketched out dates it would like to hit, while refusing to attach consequences to them.
He said he would not “put some sort of invisible deadline on something that doesn’t exist in my mind,” per the same report, adding that he hopes for a decision sooner than later.
The coach was more expansive about what Donald himself is measuring. Speaking after the opener, McVay framed the evaluation in the veteran’s own terms.
“Am I able to stack back-to-back days? Am I able to do some of the different things, and some of the benchmarks that he’s set out for himself?” McVay said.
None of this is new positioning for McVay, who has been openly delighted by the whole saga. After the first formal workout earlier this month, he couldn’t resist a grin.
“Best tryout we’ve ever had,” McVay joked at the time. “I think he could make the team.”
The trade that restarted everything
Donald retired in March 2024 after 10 seasons, all with the Rams organization, and stayed retired through two full seasons. What changed was the arrival of the one player whose résumé rhymes with his own.
The Rams acquired Myles Garrett from the Cleveland Browns in a June 1 blockbuster, a deal that included 2024 Defensive Rookie of the Year Jared Verse going to Cleveland. Donald’s reaction arrived within a day.
“[The Myles Garrett trade] for sure got me thinking,” Donald said via text, per “The Pat McAfee Show” on June 2.
The pull is obvious. Garrett, 30, is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, giving him 125.5 in his career.
Pairing him with Donald — even a version of Donald two years removed from game action — would put two of the defining pass rushers of their era on the same line, on a roster that also added former Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie in a March trade.
Donald finished his career with 111 sacks, 543 tackles, 24 forced fumbles and seven fumble recoveries in 154 games, and his eight first-team All-Pro selections are tied for the fifth-most in NFL history. He, Lawrence Taylor and J.J. Watt are the only three-time winners of the Defensive Player of the Year award.
The calendar Donald is working against
The structural deadlines are softer than they appear. Teams must trim rosters to 53 players by Aug. 30, but that date does not bind Donald — he sits on the NFL’s retired list and would apply to the league office for reinstatement whenever he decides.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport noted last month that a return could even come during the regular season. Still, the football calendar has a way of forcing clarity.
The Rams open the regular season against the San Francisco 49ers on Sept. 10, and every additional week of ramp-up Donald banks before that date makes a Week 1 role more realistic. A second formal workout with the cutdown two weeks out suggests the evaluation is reaching its answer-the-question phase, whichever way it breaks.
The Rams he would rejoin are already humming
Part of what makes the decision interesting is that the Rams do not, strictly speaking, need a savior. Saturday’s opener doubled as a showcase for first-round rookie quarterback Ty Simpson, who completed 21 of 25 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns without an interception in his debut.
McVay’s roster praise this weekend came with the caveat that he likes his team as constructed. That is precisely the environment veteran comebacks are made for.
Donald would not be asked to carry a rebuilding defense; he would be slotting into a contender next to the league’s best edge rusher, with snap counts that could be managed from day one.
What comes next
Nothing about Sunday’s paperwork commits Donald to anything, and everyone involved has been careful to say so. But the trend line only points one direction: a private July workout became a formal August tryout, then another, while the man who would coach him publicly hopes for an answer soon and privately pencils in dates.
The next two weeks — cutdown on Aug. 30, opener preparation right behind it — offer the most natural window for a resolution.
If it comes, one of the greatest defensive players the league has ever seen will have talked himself back onto a Super Bowl contender one workout at a time.
If it doesn’t, the Rams will go to Week 1 with the roster McVay says he already believes in, and the wire entries will stand as the summer’s most tantalizing what-if.
