Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald surprised the football-following world by retiring after the 2023 season. It didn\u2019t surprise him, at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew from when I first walked on the field for training camp that it would be my last year,\u201d Donald told reporters on Wednesday, four days before the team honors him during a Sunday night home game against the Buccaneers. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to share that with you guys. I didn\u2019t want to be a distraction, but my family knew. I knew. I\u2019m pretty sure a couple of the coaches. . . . I know Sean [McVay] had a feel for it because we had conversations prior to me coming back. I knew from the start of the season what it was going to be. That\u2019s why my last year I tried to enjoy it every moment of it, taking it all in, the bad games and the good games. I was just trying to take it in like a kid playing all over again. I felt like I did that. I had a lot of fun my last season. To be with a young group that had a lot of success, to see those guys grow over the years, it\u2019s pretty cool to watch them now.\u201d<\/p>\n
So does he miss football?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Donald said. \u201cTo be honest with you, I never have had an itch after I retired to like, \u2018I want to come back, I want to play football still.\u2019 You miss things from the game and for me, it\u2019s not really playing the game. It\u2019s being in the locker room, hanging with the guys, watching film, cracking jokes, more the comraderie with the fellas. I\u2019m OK. I\u2019m fulfilled. I\u2019m happy with where I\u2019m at in my life right now and what I\u2019m doing and obviously everything I do I strive for greatness. I felt like I checked that off of football and in the next chapter of life, just transitioning all that into what I\u2019m trying to do and build right now. I love the game of football. I just don\u2019t love playing the game of football anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did it well enough to be a first-ballot, no-brainer, mic-drop Hall of Famer. That\u2019s still a few years away, but it\u2019s inevitable.<\/p>\n
As inevitable as Donald blowing up the opposing offensive line and wreaking havoc, for more often than not. Which he probably could do this weekend, if he wanted to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald surprised the football-following world by retiring after the 2023 season. It didn\u2019t surprise…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":391685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-391684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}