Aaron Donald’s a career in American football’s NFL lasted ten years. The Los Angeles Rams announced about the end of the playing career of the era’s most prominent defender on Friday.
Donald played for the Rams as a “defensive tackle” and earned $157 million in his career. He is generally considered a sure choice for the Hall of Fame, i.e. the sport’s honor gallery.
The head coach of the Finnish national football team Mikko Koikkalainen hails Donald as the best player he has watched throughout his career.
– If the playing spots were valued the same, it could be that he is the best player who has played in the league in the last 20 years. The importance of the position of the quarterbacks is great, so (Tom) Brady you have to prioritize, but Donald was better in his own position than Brady in quarterbacking.
Every year in the constellation
At that time, the Rams, who were still based in St. Louis, drafted Donald into the league in the first round as the 13th player in 2014. The team hit a gold mine: Donald was selected to the prestigious All Pro first team eight times and was a star player on the Pro Bowl lists in each of the ten seasons of his career.
From his first seconds, Donald was one of the most feared defenders in the NFL. Insider reporter Adam Schefter wrote in X on Friday that at the start of Rams training camp in 2014, he received a text message about Rams practices. The message read “Aaron Donald is unreal” (Finnish: “Aaron Donald is unreal good”).
The message foreshadows things to come, as Donald won the best defensive rookie award and bagged the league best defenseman award three times in his career.
– He was immediately the best in his position when he came to the league, and was like that throughout his career. One of the greatest players of this generation, Koikkalainen beams.
Donald settled the championship
The highlight of Donald’s career came in February 2022, when the Rams knocked off the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. The defender was in a decisive position in securing the championship. The Bengals were in pursuit at the end of the game and the ball was the quarterback’s By Joe Burrowbut Donald lunged past Bengals players and brought down the opposing quarterback.
– He practically decided himself at the end that now we will win this match, Koikkalainen recalls.
Social media has been filled with words of praise for Donald. The NFL’s X profile text has been updated to honor Donald, and the series also made an update asking if Donald is the greatest of all time. He is talked about as opposing quarterbacks worst nightmare. Rams coach Sean McVay predicted before the end of the Super Bowl that Donald would decide the game.
Also, the quarterbacks of the division rivals, the Arizona Cardinals Kyler Murray and the Seattle Seahawks Geno Smith, have praised the legend who ended his career. Murray even humorously thanked the fact that he no longer has to play against Donald.
– It shows his greatness that he has by far been the defender who has received the most attention from his opponents, and has still made the statistics he has made. No team has gone into a match without Donald being the first, whose influence is tried to be minimized, says Koikkalainen.
Worth three players
Koikkailainen estimated that although Donald was quite short for his playing position (185 centimeters), his mobility and explosiveness made him exceptional. According to him, the Rams cannot replace Donald directly, but that requires the contribution of two or three different players on the field.
This is apt, as Rams opponents sometimes lined up as many as three players specifically to stop Donald.
– He had the highest salary for his position in the league, but the Rams have gotten back every dollar and more, Koikkalainen continues.
According to Koikkailainen, there is no direct next Aaron Donald in the NFL. He adds that if someone ever gets to even 80 percent of Donald’s achievements, that’s already a great achievement.
Career ends already at the age of 32, even though there are no significant injuries in the background. Donald was allowed to stop playing on his own terms. Koikkalainen says that the increased salaries are part of the reason why the absolute tops of the NFL no longer feel the need to tear themselves apart and play into their forties.
The past ten years will go down in the history books.
– The story of the 2010s of the NFL cannot be told without Aaron Donald. There haven’t been many men like that in the NFL, the expert sums up.