The Aaron Donald comeback is officially here. After roughly nine weeks of speculation following the Myles Garrett trade, the 35-year-old defensive tackle has returned to the Los Angeles Rams, and the football world is trying to figure out what to expect from a player who has no modern precedent for what he’s attempting.

This is exactly what every football fan wanted to see the moment Garrett landed in L.A. It’s the kind of super team experiment the NFL rarely produces. The biggest question is just how good can we expect Donald to still be?

If there was ever a player to come out of retirement after this much time off at this age and still be good at football, it’s Aaron Donald. It is by no means impossible. But what precedent do we have for this in the modern NFL? None. So we just have no idea.

Donald was at the podium for his first media availability since returning, and he talked about how he has microanalyzed his own workouts and sees the same caliber of athlete in his body. From a healing standpoint, he’s probably in the best health of his football life after so much time away from the grind.

But we still have no clue what to expect from a 35-year-old interior defensive lineman who hasn’t played competitive football in over two years.

The end of Donald’s first career wasn’t a decline, it was a shift

Anyone can Google Aaron Donald’s stats and notice the sack totals dropped. After posting 20.5 sacks in 2018 and then three consecutive seasons of 12.5, 13.5, and 12.5, his final two years produced 5 sacks in 11 games in 2022 and 8 sacks in 16 games in 2023.

The numbers suggest a decline, but that tells an incomplete story.

First and foremost, just because Donald only missed slightly more than a handful of games doesn’t mean he was healthy the entirety of those two seasons. As any athlete in his mid-30s knows, when you pick up an injury at that age, it lingers far longer than it once did. General recuperation and rehabilitation get harder.

When you look at the advanced numbers from those final seasons, Donald played a lower percentage of snaps than he once did.

He still faced a staggering rate of double teams and extra attention. And yet he was still a productive player on a snap-to-snap basis. The day Aaron Donald retired, he was still the most feared defender in the entire NFL. That’s a fact.

The premise that Donald was some shell of himself at the end simply doesn’t hold up. He went from being the most feared defender in the NFL for almost the entirety of his career to being, in his last couple of seasons, still the most feared defender in the NFL.

Why 60% of Aaron Donald might be more than enough

Here’s the thing about this version of Donald’s career: for the first time ever, going back to his days at Pittsburgh and through his entire tenure with the Rams, he is not going to be the guy on the front line commanding the most attention from opposing offenses.

Their eyes are going to go to No. 95. Myles Garrett is the game wrecker now, maybe the best defensive end of this generation.

Donald doesn’t have to be the guy taking on double teams at crazy rates and still creating negatives. He’s going to get far more one-on-one situations than he ever has, even if that’s only 20 to 25 snaps per game. It’s about being productive in those reps.

And it’s not just Garrett. It’s Byron Young, who posted double digit sacks a year ago. It’s Braden Fiske. It’s Kobie Turner. Donald only has to be a third-down specialist, an interior rusher on this roster. You don’t need the Aaron Donald of old. You need the Aaron Donald of useful.

If he’s 50% of what he was, you could make an argument he might be the third-best defensive lineman on this team behind Garrett and Turner.

That’s how loaded this front is. People forget that Donald once magnified guys like Leonard Floyd, who were passable, solid football players. His current supporting cast is better than what surrounded him on that Super Bowl team.

Donald’s real role is the closer

I don’t think counting stats are going to do this justice. Aaron Donald’s role on this football team is the closer. Experience matters in the biggest moments, and what was the last play we saw from Donald before he retired?

A game-clinching sack to win a Super Bowl.

I’m not predicting he’s going to make the game-winning sack this season. What I’m predicting is that when there is a massive moment in a football game, whether it’s a 2-minute drill or a potential game-winning drive for the opposition, Aaron Donald is going to be on the field. I could not care less about what percentage of total snaps he plays before those moments arrive. That’s his time.

He’s the turbo button, the guy you bring in to elevate the unit in the biggest spots because the Rams are the league’s Super Bowl favorite. If Donald contributes nothing, that’s okay. He’s not a load-bearing piece of this team. He’s the finest icing ever placed upon an NFL cake.

In the biggest moments, I still trust him more than some of the other guys on that loaded defensive line to make the play when it matters most.

Those crunch-time opportunities belong to Aaron Donald. He’s not the best defensive lineman the Rams have, but he might be the guy who matters most in the moment that matters most.