Rich Predicts Aaron Donald’s Rams Decision Will Be…?

Three weeks in, the segment refuses to die. Is he back yet? Where is A-aron right now?

Aaron Donald is still not back. What he is doing is showing up on the NFL wire for a second time as having tried out with the Rams, because that is the verbiage the league requires when a guy is not on the roster and is working out in team-issued gear at the team facility.

A tryout. For a three-time Defensive Player of the Year.

Mike offered the only defense of the wording available. Actors audition, so fine. Rich just enjoys the transaction line itself, the flat, unbothered way it reads on the wire next to a name that belongs in a different font entirely. What else do you want on there? Grown ass man. Super hero. Three-time DPOY.

Nobody on the show pretends to know what the holdup is. The people covering this for a living have run out of ways to describe it. He is going through a process. He needs to figure this thing out, then that thing. Working out this way rather than with the team is apparently what he prefers.

Here is where Rich landed, and it is a prediction more than a guess. There are going to be a couple of extra bags and a couple hundred more pounds on the flight to Melbourne, Australia. In that first game for the Rams, we are going to see Donald and Garrett on the field together. The other outcome would be a genuine surprise, because otherwise what exactly were these tryouts for?

The timeline supports it. Donald was never going to play in the preseason anyway, so nothing about his absence this month reads as a signal. He is not going to pop out against the Saints at SoFi Stadium in Week 2 of the preseason just to test it out and give some tight end trying to make a roster a free shot at his knees on a wham block. That is not happening. He simply is not back yet, and everybody should back off, or he will come for them when he is.

What genuinely surprised the room was the order of operations. Von Miller signed with the Cowboys before Donald signed with anybody. That was not on the preseason bingo card, a retired player still deciding while a free agent who had been sitting at home found a job first. Somebody pointed out the difference. Miller was not signed. Donald has been retired for years and the other guy had only been out of work a few weeks.

Old is new again everywhere you look. Odell Beckham Jr. caught a pass this weekend. DeAndre Hopkins is working a wide receiver room at Georgia Tech and says he is not retired, which raises a fair question about why teams needing help at the position have not picked up a phone.

The question still stands, though, because the answer is coming. He is not back yet. He is coming back.