He's Back!!! - Rich Reacts to the Highly Anticipated Return of Aaron Donald to the Rams

The segment can be retired. Not because it stopped working, but because it finally has an answer.

Is he back yet?

Yes.

Aaron Donald is a Los Angeles Ram again, on a one-year deal worth $20 million and reportedly reaching $30 million, and the show that spent a full month asking the question got to spike the football on it.

Rich started the bit on July 31st, on the assumption that Donald was obviously coming back and would start kicking tires any day. It ran through August. It outlasted every reasonable expectation, including the show's.

"We got a lot of legs out of it."

The memes were immediate, and the best of them came from inside the house. Erica Donald's post read: I let him out of the house, y'all.

Rich flagged that as the actual reporting. If she is not on board, 99 is not coming.

The Rams themselves went with a letter, on team stationery, addressed to the commissioner and the league office in New York.

"Dear Commissioner Goodell, I'm back."

Donald's own explanation of the decision was less about the body than people assumed. It started with conversations with Sean McVay and with watching what the roster was becoming.

"You see other moves they make and it's like, okay, I wish I was still out there playing right about now."

From there it became 13 or 14 weeks of nonstop training, testing whether he could still move the way he needs to move. He says he felt good.

He also revealed the timeline, which reframes the whole month. He knew two weeks ago.

"I know the world was saying all types of different things and nobody knew what was going on," Donald said, "but I kind of knew for two weeks."

He had been talking to McVay every week, nearly every day, feeding him updates, and he felt bad about the questions McVay was fielding at camp every single day.

Rich would like it noted that this is a very small price to pay.

What Donald would not do was rush it, and his reasoning is the most convincing part of the whole thing.

"Once you choose to come back, you're all the way back in. Can't be halfway in."

Two years away were not idle years. He was building things, working from home, and jumping back into the fire required the mental commitment as much as the physical one.

Myles Garrett is why.

Asked directly how Garrett factored in, Donald did not hedge. He already considered it a stacked defensive line with Jared Verse and Byron Young and the interior group. Then the team added a generational talent.

"That can be fun, right?"

He was careful to add that he does not think he is the missing piece, calling this a complete team with or without him, and describing the chance to be part of it as a blessing after two years retired.

The person who actually decided this was his wife.

"If the wife wasn't happy, it wasn't going to get done," Donald said. She told him she was with him 100 percent if he wanted it, and on the days he did not know, she told him not to make the decision faster than he needed to.

McVay, for his part, is taking it one day at a time and declining to discuss plans, including Australia. First step is getting Donald on the practice field and acclimated to teammates and coaches, then seeing what the ramp-up looks like.

With that settled, Rich moved to the part he has been waiting a month to do, which is talk about what this defense actually is.

Two players added who were not on this team last season. Between them, five Defensive Player of the Year awards, including the reigning one. A seven-time Pro Bowler on one side, a ten-time Pro Bowler on the other. Add Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson in the secondary.

For the historical comparison, Rich went local and went old.

There was once a thing in Los Angeles called the Fearsome Foursome. Rosey Grier. Lamar Lundy. Merlin Olsen. And Deacon Jones, who did not just record sacks but coined the word, the image being that you take a quarterback and put him in a bag.

Jones also invented the head slap, and Rich offered the detail that makes the point. Offensive linemen started reversing the screws on their helmets so the exposed ends faced outward, specifically so the head slap would pierce his hand.

Garrett and Donald are the 21st century version.

The Super Bowl is in Los Angeles. The general manager who assembled this, Les Snead, was booked for hour three. Rich called it the ultimate bet pushed to the center of the table, a one-year deal on a group that is motivated and in its prime, with the exception of a man who spent two years on a couch and can return to his prime anyway.

The Rams also have the reigning MVP at quarterback and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, a combination Rich could not remember another team having.

Then he made the more interesting observation, which is that everything he just said is going to be intolerable to the rest of the league.

The defending champion Seahawks are not closing up shop. Neither are the 49ers, who get the Rams first in Australia. Neither are the Cowboys, who Rich thinks are as stacked as they have been since their championship era. Neither are the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Bills, or the Chargers across the street.

All four of the first group are on the Rams schedule, two of them twice.

He is especially looking forward to Denver in week three, and to the meeting where Sean Payton addresses an offensive line that may be the best in football about the national narrative.

"Yeah, guys, you got no shot this week. That's what I'm hearing. What do you think?"

There is a game in Australia, a Wednesday night game against the Packers before Thanksgiving, and a pile of Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights. Rich compared the whole production to The Godfather, which prompted the only question left.

Is the car going to blow up?