Few nonquarterbacks are Aaron Donald, which is why the Rams’ defensive tackle became the first NFL player in history who doesn’t throw a football to sign a contract worth more than $30 million per season. The initial cash flow in Donald’s deal, according to several reports, is richer than that of both Patrick Mahomes’s and Josh Allen’s. God bless the Rams’ accounting department, which will soon resort to hiding cash under the jackets of older relatives en route to Switzerland to avoid the salary cap police.
Donald earned the money by being a generational talent. There is no one who can rush as effectively from multiple locations or command more double teams. The Rams can cause five offensive linemen and a tight end to bounce off each other and tumble like heels in a wrestling ring with just three defenders. They did it quite often during their push to the Super Bowl (watch again, if you have the chance, as the Arizona front five folded on itself during the Kyler Murray playoff pick-six, where two Cardinals boycotted their blocking duties to attend to the threat of Donald potentially, maybe rushing the quarterback). The Rams know they cannot reach that apex again if Donald were to walk away.
This is why what Donald did in the walk-up to the Super Bowl, and in the weeks afterward, was brilliant: He talked about leaving football. He talked about it kind of often. Reports of this first broke in the hours before the Super Bowl kicked off. He let the Rams know, through various winks and nods, that coming back meant he would have to be treated better than any defensive player in history.
