Aaron Donald Retires: One of the greatest of all time calls it a career at age 32

• The greatest ever to do it? Donald entered the league in 2014 and posted a 90.2 overall grade as a rookie. That would end up being the worst mark of his entire career. Only four players — including Donald — broke the 90.0 grading barrier last year, yet Donald did it every season he played in the NFL, including his debut year.

• An iron man for a decade: Donald’s run of 10 straight elite years is almost unfathomable. In that time, he suffered just one significant injury, and even in that year, he played over 600 snaps and generated 40 total pressures — a good year for a lot of very good defensive tackles.

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Los Angeles Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald, one of the greatest players ever to do it, has retired from the NFL and set the clock running on the five years until he walks into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Whenever a great player retires, there is typically debate about whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame. If they are good enough, the debate becomes whether they are a first-ballot Hall of Famer or whether they belong in what Deion Sanders would term the “upper room.”

For Donald, the question is different. The question is whether he is the greatest defensive player ever to do it.

Aaron Donald: PFF grades and ranks since 2014 (postseason included)

Click here to view Aaron Donald's career in Premium Stats

Donald entered the league in 2014 and posted a 90.2 overall grade as a rookie. That would end up being the worst mark of his entire career.

Only four players—including Donald—broke the 90.0 grading barrier last year, yet Donald did it every season he played in the NFL, including his debut year.

Arriving just a few seasons before Donald, J.J. Watt had already reset what we thought was possible from an interior pass-rusher, but Donald joined Watt on that plane and then kept the gas pedal down when injuries knocked Watt’s career sideways.

Since entering the league, Donald has produced 119 more pressures than any other player. That number of 119 is also the PFF record for total pressures over a single season, and that’s the gap Donald has over the field.

If we limit it to just interior players, there is even more daylight between Donald and the chasing pack. Fletcher Cox is the next-closest interior player, and he stands 241 pressures behind Donald.

The Rams star is one of only two defenders to post a pass-rush win rate of at least 20.0% over that time. He has the fifth-best pressure rate (15.4%) among all defenders and by far the best mark from any interior defender.

The only thing stopping us from conclusively declaring Donald the best interior defender ever to play is the lack of comparable evidence from the game’s greats who pre-date the current landscape of advanced data, tape study and information.

PFF has added a whole world of advanced information—even independent of play-by-play grading—and there’s really no way of knowing just how dominant the likes of “Mean” Joe Greene or Merlin Olsen were back in their day.

Pro Bowls and All-Pro nominations are how we stack those players up years after the fact, but we know how flawed those can be by looking at our own time. All we can say with certainty is that Donald was by far the most dominant player at his position in the NFL in the last 18 years that PFF has been grading. Watt reached the same kind of peaks but for just a fraction of the time. 

Highest-graded seasons by defensive linemen: 2006-2023 (postseason included)

Donald’s run of 10 straight years at that level is almost unfathomable. In that time, he suffered just one significant injury, and even in that year, he played over 600 snaps and generated 40 total pressures — and that's a good year for a lot of very good defensive tackles.

Donald doesn’t get enough credit for that durability. The 13th overall pick in the 2014 draft, he slipped as far as he did because he was “undersized.” His college tape showed how destructive he could be, but at 285 pounds, NFL teams feared his ability to hold up against better competition.

A decade later, Donald’s near-bulletproof durability was one of his hallmarks. Including the playoffs, Donald played over 9,000 snaps in his career, an average that only six other interior players cleared this past season.

One of the best to ever do it has now called it a career, and the entire NFL is looking for a new benchmark for excellence now that he has gone.