Rams GM Les Snead Talks Aaron Donald's Return, Rams QBs & More I Full Interview IThe Rich Eisen Show

The Wall Street Journal called Les Snead the Warren Buffett of the National Football League. Snead checked his bank account and reports a meaningful gap between the two.

"Don't ever believe headlines," he said.

The investment everyone wants to discuss is Aaron Donald, and Snead's framing of the position is refreshingly plain.

"Football's pretty simple," he said. "Someone that can change the math, rush the passer."

What struck him most, watching Donald at the podium the day before, was not the body.

"You could see that joy. It was almost like he was a couple of years younger."

Snead thinks that comes from the specific experience of stepping off a cliff. You do something your whole life, and then that part of your life dies. Getting the chance to do it again produces something you can see in a man's body language.

Rich walked him through the process, noting that Snead appeared to be slow-playing the hand, careful not to force it and not to get sucked out on the river.

Snead's answer was that there was no hand to play.

"There was never a moment where we were recruiting him," he said. McVay has said repeatedly that Donald owed the Rams nothing after giving the organization everything he had for a decade. This was only ever about whether Donald wanted it.

And Donald was only going to do it if he believed he could play near the level he left at, which meant going through a process Snead called grueling. He described it as Aaron Donald basic training for the summer.

Then Donald walked into the building and said let's do this thing.

Asked whether landing Myles Garrett was partly designed to light a pilot light under Donald, Snead was clear that it was not.

"That wasn't even a dream," he said. It happened organically. But he does believe everything the Rams had built, with Garrett as the cherry on top, is what reignited the fire.

His credit list is specific. The players, now Donald's teammates again, were a big part of it. So was the relationship with Sean McVay, two men who did a lot of hard things together and built a bond because of it.

And ownership.

Snead credited Stan and Josh Kroenke for recognizing a rare situation, in which one of the pillars of the franchise, a Mount Rushmore figure among Rams, is still of an age to play and wants to come back, and then allowing it to happen.

"It's going to be a meaningful journey, and it's because of the people."

The origin story has a paper trail. After the Garrett signing there were social media posts where Donald was, in Snead's word, flirting with it. Then Donald reached out to McVay directly, acknowledging that a post is a post, and said he was seriously thinking about it.

McVay called Snead down to the office.

"Hey, you won't believe this. I just got off the phone with Aaron Donald and he might be serious about this."

That was May.

By July, Donald had told them he would train hard to find out whether his body could handle it, which is when Snead and McVay understood this was becoming more reality than dream.

Rich raised the strategic advantage in the timing, which is real. Adding Garrett in June and Donald in nearly September means opponents cannot respond. You cannot go acquire a unicorn to answer a unicorn, let alone two.

Snead reframed it as luck rather than design.

Every team over a 17-week season plus the bonus rounds gets some good fortune and some bad, some version of a black swan nobody sees coming. This one broke the Rams' way. Plenty of teams have retired players who cannot come back at 51. It happens to be 2026, and Donald is still of an age to play good football.

On what Donald looks like on a field, Snead said he looks very similar to who he was, with the caveat Donald himself offers, which is to get in pads and find out.

He also pushed back on the couch narrative. Anyone who follows football has seen an Aaron Donald workout video surface every month or so. Donald was always going to prioritize training. He would be the first to say that is different from football shape, which is what the summer was for.

"He was not going to come into this thing fat and happy."

Rich then noted, dryly, that nobody is complaining anymore about Snead failing to give Matthew Stafford enough pieces.

Snead's answer was about responsibility. They want to make the most of the Matthew era, with a quarterback playing at an MVP level paired with a head coach at his level. But he immediately widened it out to the 22 other players on the field, the 53 in the locker room, and the roughly 70 counting the practice squad.

On the backup quarterback question, where Jimmy Garoppolo's experience sits behind Stafford alongside two men who have not done it in the pros, Snead did not flinch.

"To earn the game experience, you got to earn it," he said. Garoppolo did not have it once. Neither did Stafford. Both were afforded a chance and made the most of it.

He believes sitting behind Stafford and Garoppolo has been genuinely beneficial for Stetson Bennett, who has had years to get closer to mastering this offense and then gone and played preseason football. He gave Ty Simpson credit for arriving as a rookie and prioritizing preparation, which is about as close to mastery as a rookie gets.

If either is called upon, Snead said, the burden falls on everyone else to rally and keep the train going.

Blake Corum and Kyren Williams have both had good camps, and Snead likes the one-two punch, which he described as a Notre Dame and Michigan combination that gets along better than it should. Similar height, different skill sets.

There are no concerns about Garrett's health. The goal is preparing him for a 17-week journey with the vision of earning more games after that, using the team's sports science.

Puka Nacua is getting closer to returning to practice, and Snead explained the philosophy behind not rushing him. When a player picks up a nick during camp, and the resume already speaks for itself, patience serves you better when the games start mattering. He praised the way Nacua has attacked the bumps in his journey since the end of last season.

Then Rich pointed out the absurdity that Davante Adams is also on this team, an afterthought in the conversation.

Snead lit up at that, calling Adams a captain, and describing how Nacua's absence from practice has let McVay move Adams around and let him and Stafford find a different page than they would otherwise. He expects Adams gets a yellow jacket eventually.

Asked who nobody is talking about, Snead started with the obvious answer, Trent McDuffie, acquired for a first-round pick, and Jaylen Watson solidifying the corner play.

Then he gave the real answer, which was not a name.

"There's going to be some moments where we're probably sitting in the belly of that well," he said. Adversity finds every team. Some player nobody is discussing right now is going to come off the bench and make a contribution, and the collective has to hold together while it happens.

On his own emotional state heading into a season with the Super Bowl in his building, Snead was characteristically unsentimental.

"The season matters more than the offseason," he said. They are jacked to start keeping score for real.