Donald had been weighing retirement the last few years, but many believed that was just a negotiating tactic heading into this, the last year of his current contract. But it looks like he was serious and is ready to move on from playing football and enjoy time with his family and millions and millions of dollars.
He’ll go down as one of the greatest players in NFL history – an 8-time All-Pro selection, a 10-time pro bowl selection, a Super bowl Champion, and a three time defensive player of the year. Those DPOY seasons came in succession in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and in ’18 he posted a career and league best 20.5 sacks. That’s an all pro amount of sacks in a season from an edge rusher, but it’s an absurd figure for an interior lineman like Donald, absolutely absurd. I could make a case that Aaron Donald is the best defensive player in NFL history. In that 20.5 sack season, he was doing ridiculous things like tossing 300lb grown men into the backfield with enough force to knock over the quarterback.
He was elite from day 1 when he ran an all time position best 4.68 second 40-yard dash at the 2014 combine. The only negative in his scouting report is that he was undersized at 6’1″ and 280lbs coming out of Pitt, where he was also stellar.
