Bears Fans Seth Rollins REEEAAALLLY Hopes Aaron Donald Stays Retired

The show is officially on Aaron Donald watch, and nobody in the room sounded like they were bracing for a no.

The evidence is circumstantial and overwhelming. Donald has been spotted at the facility. His Instagram workouts are not the maintenance kind. As the panel put it, he is not throwing up 50s, he is throwing up 110-pound dumbbells, which reads a lot more like preparing for the rigors of an NFL season than staying in shape.

Sean McVay did not shut the door either. In a clip played on the show, the Rams head coach called his relationship with Donald special and way bigger than football, said it is family with them, and then offered the line that will keep this story alive.

"What he's going to do is he is thinking about this," McVay said. "He's going to go through his process. And the one thing about Aaron Donald is what he does, he does it full speed ahead."

That was enough for the desk. There is too much smoke, and nobody has flatly killed it.

The tempering came fast, though. Nobody expects the three-time defensive player of the year and first-team All-Pro version to walk back through the door two years removed. The argument is that it does not matter. Even a diminished Donald draws attention, and the thought of a team asking someone to block him one-on-one while Myles Garrett works the other side sounds unfair on its face.

Guest host Seth Rollins, fresh off a couple of hours on Good Morning Football, took it a step further and argued Garrett could break his own sack record. His reasoning was situational. Cleveland was not good last season, so the Browns were playing from behind and opponents were content to run the clock out. In Los Angeles, with Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua and Davante Adams, the Rams should be playing with a lead constantly, which means opposing offenses are throwing and Garrett is teeing off.

Rollins was not willing to write off a peak return either.

"I'm not going to sit here and say he can't," Rollins said, pointing out that everyone has watched Donald train and that the strength is clearly still there. It helps, too, that he would not have to be the man on every single snap.

The real question the group kept circling was mental, not physical. Donald has done everything the league has to offer. The Sundays are the easy part. It is the Tuesday-through-Saturday grind, the travel, the family time given back up, and the willingness to get hit again after two years away.

Rollins made the comparison to his own line of work, imagining stepping away from wrestling for a year or two and then having to commit fully again, not just for himself but for teammates.

The consensus was that if Donald says yes, there is no half-stepping version of it. He is not coming back to let someone else carry the load, and he is not coming back for a cameo. Teammates have always described him as the best teammate, a guy who wants to be in the trenches from the start, which is also why the room expects an answer sooner rather than later. Rams camp was already on the calendar for Saturday.

Which led to the only question left, and it was an absurd one. If Donald comes back to a team that is already a Super Bowl favorite, is an undefeated season actually on the table?

The room hedged. It has been decades, and the Patriots got that close and could not finish it.