ESPN’s Jason McCourty: When We Can Expect an Aaron Donald Return Decision

Rich asked Jason McCourty how long the show's new "is he back yet" segment has left to run. McCourty gave two answers, and the second one is the one that matters.

The smart play, he said, would be to wait out training camp entirely and then come back. But that is not the read he has on Aaron Donald.

"If he's going to come back, maybe a week, week and a half at most," McCourty told Rich.

The reasoning is not about paperwork. It is about what Donald would need in order to show up as Donald.

"He's going to want to be in training camp. He's going to want to get hit. He's going to want to hit people and test it out in preseason games and different things of that nature," McCourty said. "Just to see exactly where he is."

Then the sentence that frames the whole comeback question.

"Aaron Donald is not coming back to just be an okay player."

McCourty's expectation is that if Donald returns, he wants to be back in a version of himself that is on the field on third downs and completely impacting the game. Diminished snaps are fine. Diminished impact is not.

Rich admitted he finds the whole thing hard to believe, because Donald is, in his words, damn near an Avenger. He also confessed that his own frame of reference is having too many pretzels in Germany two years ago, which is a different level of athletic sacrifice.

So he asked McCourty the real question. How does a man actually figure out whether he can still do this at the level he is used to?

McCourty, who retired himself, answered from inside it.

"To not play football for two years, you have to consciously decide that I want to go back to being punched in the face every single play that I'm out there on the field," he said.

That is the part that never shows up in the workout videos. The idea of a return is easy to romanticize. McCourty laid out the fantasy version honestly, and it is genuinely appealing: back in an LA Rams jersey, lining up next to Myles Garrett, another shot at a Super Bowl ring.

"But do I want to go through the process in which it takes to get there? That to me is the hard part."

McCourty knows exactly how that math resolved for him.

"When I retired from the game and the further I got away, two years removed, I'm good," he said. "I don't want any parts of this."

The difference is that Donald knows precisely what the week-to-week job requires, which cuts both ways. He is not guessing at the workload. He is also not able to fool himself about it.

"There's a lot of sacrifices that comes along with that," McCourty said, "and is he willing to pay that price to potentially get another Super Bowl ring?"

Nobody else can answer it. But if McCourty is right about the timeline, the answer is coming inside of two weeks.