Aaron Donald did like a veteran would.
He announced a possibility of joining the Los Angeles Rams to end his two-year retirement at the beginning of training camp. He then negotiated in both the media and with the Rams brass before signing after training camp and following the Rams final preseason game.
Veterans don’t like camp. And Donald, took his healthy routine over the rigors of an NFL camp before joining the Rams this week. He is also coming back to the Rams because they have a very good chance at winning Super Bowl LXI … they are currently favored to do so by the books.
If the Rams were on a downward trajectory, if Matthew Staffored had retired and the roster was depleted by injuries and age, I am willing to bet Darnold wouldn’t have ended his retirement. He would not have started the clock over on his five-year wait to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
While Darnold won a Super Bowl with the Rams five years ago, they beat the Cincinnati Bengals in Roman Numeral LVI in a close game in which Darnold played a pivotal role. Every NFL player wants to win it all, hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy in a shining moment of glory. Sometimes, good players on bad teams sign as free agents in an attempt to get the big win after toiling on bad teams.
In 1994, the San Francisco 49ers added nine free agents and at least three of them stated in no uncertain terms that they were hooking up with Eddie DeBartolo’s team for a chance to win it all. Among that group was Richard Dent, Rickey Jackson and Deion Sanders. All outstanding players but members of also-ran squads.
Dent had played eleven seasons in Chicago and spent just one season with the 49ers … and picked up two Super Bowl victories in his career. One with the Bears, in the 1985 season, and that one campaign he played for San Francisco. Jackson had played 13 seasons with the New Orleans Saints but played his final two pro years with the 49ers and got his championship wish in Super Bowl XXIX.
Sanders was a show all to himself. Drafted by the Atlanta Falcons in 1989, he played five seasons in which he sparkled in the south, but his teams only cracked the playoff field once and finished last or second to last in the NFC Western Conference four times. He saw the potential to make it to the big stage with the Niners, took it, won it, and then won again after signing with the Dallas Cowboys before the 1995 season.
Those three athletes took their talents to the 49ers in 1994 because they saw the potential of winning it all. That can be said for Donald this year. The Rams off-season of acquisition of the hailed best defensive lineman in the NFL today, Myles Garrett, can now team with a future Hall of Fame inductee for what appears to be the most talented defensive line since the Pittsburgh Steelers front four with Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Erine Holmes and Dwight White.
That unit was known as the Steel Curtain, and a front four of notable talent that played for the Minnesota Vikings a few years earlier was the Purple People Eaters with the likes of Carl Eller, Gary Larson, Alan Page and Jim Marshall. Before that, the Los Angeles Rams had the Fearsome Foursome manned by Merlin Olsen, Decon Jones, Rosy Grier and Lamar Lundy.
Now the 2026 Rams have a front four that can trade headlines with those legendary groups. No doubt, they will need a nickname.
Perhaps Blackout will serve that purpose.