Aaron Donald’s early Friday afternoon retirement announcement was a culmination of a career filled with dominant stats and unique accolades. As he prepares for life after football, though, the biggest question surrounding the future first-ballot Hall of Famer is where he stands on the all-time list among the league’s best defensive players.
Aaron Donald’s Legacy
Since being drafted with the 14th overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, Donald has been one of the best defensive players in football. His nine-sack rookie season was an uncommon sign of things to come. Donald reached his first of 10 consecutive Pro Bowls and was seen as a rising star in the game.
His dominant rookie season was just the tip of the iceberg, though. In his 10-year NFL career, Donald tallied 111 sacks, three Defensive Player of the Year Awards, eight first-team All-Pro finishes, and a Super Bowl title in 2021. He and Barry Sanders are the only players in NFL history to play 10+ seasons and be named to the Pro Bowl in each season.
Donald, Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White, Bruce Smith, and Joe Schmidt are the only defensive players in league history to be named a first-team All-Pro eight times or more.
Most interior rushers aren’t known for their high sack total. Since his emergence, though, Donald has transformed the way the position of defensive tackle is looked at. Despite being 28th on the all-time sack list, Donald has the second-highest total for an interior rusher in NFL history.
In many ways, there may never be a defensive tackle with the kind of historical numbers that the Rams star was able to put up in just 10 seasons.
Is Donald the Best Defensive Player in NFL History?
There’s no debate in saying that Donald is the greatest defensive player in the modern era of football.
As with any discussion of the greatest player of all time, though, comparing different eras is extremely difficult. No discussion gets more clouded than discussing defensive players along the line because the “sack” statistic wasn’t calculated until the 1982 season. Great interior rushers like Joe Greene, Buck Buchanan, and Merlin Olsen were unable to have a full sack tally recorded but were among the greatest players of their era.
The other difficult part in determining Donald’s legacy is that, while his generational play was unique for his position, he wasn’t the first tackle to dominate in this way. That would belong to John Randle of the Minnesota Vikings.
That said, as good as Randle was, no defensive tackle has ever recorded over 20 sacks in a single season before Donald. No one has come close since. Donald also joined J.J. Watt and Taylor as the only players with three Defensive Player of the Year Awards. For the Ram not to be an edge rusher like the other two, it’s a feather in his cap when discussing the greatest defensive players of all time.
So, while it will always be difficult to quantify Donald’s numbers to those who played at the same caliber before him, the legacy of the former Pitt product shows very clearly that he will be a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame player and among the greatest players in league history.
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And, who knows? Maybe history will show Donald truly as the greatest defensive player to ever set foot on an NFL field.
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