Aaron Donald hasn’t played a snap since the 2023 season ended, and the rumor mill has been churning ever since. Myles Garrett wants him back. Rams fans definitely want him back. But Andrew Whitworth, the former Rams offensive tackle who played until he was 40, is throwing some cold water on the idea.
Whitworth knows what it takes to walk away and stay away. He also knows what it takes to come back. And in a conversation with the New York Post, he laid out the single biggest question Donald has to answer for himself.
It’s not about conditioning. Donald stays in shape year-round. Whitworth said that’s just who Donald is. The guy trains constantly, no matter the season.
The injury question that changes everything
“I think it’s going to be how comfortable he is with going back out there and understanding not the positive, but the negative,” Whitworth said. “And that is, you get injured. Injuries, things that affect you past football. It’s going to be how comfortable he is with that.”
That’s the part nobody talks about when they’re dreaming up a super-team with Garrett and Donald lining up together. The physical toll isn’t just about sore muscles or a bad ankle. It’s about the kind of damage that follows you into your 50s and 60s.
Whitworth stretched his own career as far as he could. He played until his body basically told him to stop. And then when teams came calling with that “one more year” pitch, he had to think hard about whether a late-career injury was worth the risk of messing up the rest of his life.
Age makes a difference here
Donald is 35. That’s not young for an NFL defensive lineman, but it’s also not old in the way Whitworth was at 41 or 42. Whitworth said if he were 35 and the Rams needed a left tackle, he’d do everything possible to see if he could still play. That’s a notable admission.
But Donald isn’t a left tackle. He’s a defensive tackle who has spent his entire career absorbing double teams and getting hit from every angle. The wear and tear is different. The price of admission is higher.
The idea of pairing Donald with Myles Garrett is obviously tantalizing. Two future Hall of Famers on the same defensive line, one already in Cleveland, one potentially coming out of retirement to join him. Fans have been floating that vision for months. But Whitworth’s point is that the fantasy version skips the hardest part: the actual decision to put your body on the line again.
Only Donald knows how that calculation feels. And from the sound of it, he’s still weighing it.
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