NFL Insider Tom Pelissero: How Aaron Donald’s Return Would Impact to the Rams

The shots of Aaron Donald wandering around the Rams facility are not new. Rich said this time they feel different. Tom Pelissero did not talk him out of it.

"I told you last week that this was really all in Aaron Donald's hands at this point," Pelissero said. "The Rams aren't recruiting him. There's no recruiting to be done. It's been made clear, hey, if you want to do this, we got you."

That is the whole posture. Space, support, and an open door to the facility. What Donald does with it is his call.

Pelissero drew a distinction that matters. Donald has been training, but training and getting into football shape at 35 years old after multiple years away are two different projects. "It's different than just lifted weights and doing all the wild stuff he does on social media."

Then came the research that should temper expectations. Pelissero said he had his research people look it up. Only one member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame has sat out multiple seasons and come back to play again, and that was Deion Sanders, who was still productive with the Ravens but was a part-time player by then. Reggie White and Randy Moss each sat out a year and returned, and the production did not come back with them.

"If anybody can come back and capture what they were, it's Aaron Donald," Pelissero said. "He's just probably not going to be doing that on a 70-snap per game basis."

So the vision is not a full-time defensive tackle. It is third downs. Two-minute. High-leverage snaps where you keep him fresh and then dare an offensive line to solve an unsolvable math problem.

That math is the actual point. Pelissero laid out the front the Rams would be putting on the field, with Myles Garrett already in the building, Kobie Turner, Byron Young and Braden Fiske in the rotation. "How are you going to handle both Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald?" Do you double outside, double inside, travel a chipper? Somebody is getting a one-on-one, and none of the available one-on-ones are good.

But Pelissero pushed past the snap counts to what a return would actually signal, and he reached for the biggest story in sports to do it.

Everyone is waiting on LeBron James to pick an NBA destination, Pelissero noted, and not only because James can still contribute. "If LeBron James comes to your organization, it's sending the signal to everybody, hey, he's here for one reason, which is he believes this team can win it all right now."

Donald coming back sends the same message inside that locker room. Pelissero compared it to the jolt the Garrett acquisition already delivered to a team that has made abundantly clear it considers itself a Super Bowl winning roster right now.

"Aaron Donald coming back might even get that little bit of extra of everybody being on notice day in and day out," Pelissero said. "You got to have your A game all the way through this entire season."

Which is a long way of saying the Rams are not waiting on 20 to 30 snaps from one of the greatest players who ever lived. They are waiting on what those snaps would tell everyone else in the building.