Aaron Donald: LA Rams star reportedly moments away from retiring in offseason

Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams nearly retired this offseason, and it has been revealed just how close he was to pulling it off. 

When you think of the word ‘dominant’ when you’re talking about an NFL player, there is a good to fair chance that you’re talking about Aaron Donald, who has over the years put himself on a pantheon all his own with the way that he has played the game. 

Since entering the league in 2014 when the then-St Louis Rams, he has 441 combined tackles, 226 QB hits, 150 tackles for loss and 98 sacks which have turned into 8 Pro Bowl appearances, 7 First-team All-Pro honours and 3 NFL Defensive Player of the Year awards, before finally getting his well-deserved Super Bowl this past season.

In a sense, there is nothing more than he can do to put himself on course for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, everything else would just be the cherry on top of the cake. Which is perhaps why ahead of their Super Bowl victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in February, reports emerged that he could have retired if the Rams were victorious.

And that decision very nearly came to fruition, as he appeared on the I Am Athlete podcast (via Ari Meirov), that he was ‘at peace’ with the idea of moving on from the Rams, which could have spelled retirement, only for him to agree to a new contract and put it all to rest. 

The fact of the matter, is that he came very close to following through on his talk from February. In a report from the NFL Newtork’s Ian Rapaport, Donald had even gone so far as to put his retirement in writing and handing it to the Rams, before ultimately coming to a different decision: 

“The agent for the greatest defensive tackle to ever play sent a letter to the only team Donald’s played for, the Rams, and