Aaron Donald is playing for a spot in history

‘The American Carnival’ is a yearlong cultural examination of the impact of the Super Bowl halftime show far beyond entertainment. Through history, politics, race, economics and music, the series explores how 12 minutes on the most-watched stage in the country often say more about America than the game itself.

Every opponent’s game plan for Aaron Donald always started and ended the same.

What’s the point in preparing for the inevitable?

Each NFL generation has a defensive player who feels less like an indomitable opponent and more like a tour de force. Some even feel like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Donald, the former Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle, is the asteroid. That extinction event may now return to a league that was just starting to find complacency without him.

The worst-kept secret in football is the potential return of the 10-time Pro Bowler, eight-time first-team All-Pro, and three-time Defensive Player of the Year. Should the 35-year-old return to the Rams — the team with which he won a Super Bowl in 2022 in his home stadium — the script reads like a Hollywood blockbuster.

Every American Carnival season begins with the same destination in mind: the Super Bowl. Sometimes the artist commanding the halftime stage dominates conversation. Sometimes it’s the host city and the months of preparation for one of the world’s biggest spectacles. Sometimes it’s about a player obsessed with the opportunity for one more chance at glory. And sometimes, in the rarest of alignments, all three collide.

Only time will tell if Donald will be able to hoist two Lombardi trophies in his home stadium.

The franchise icon is joining a stellar defense that already features offseason additions Trent McDuffie and Myles Garrett. With the Super Bowl being held in Los Angeles again this season, the historic moment might be too tempting for Donald to pass up.

A haunted house. The room of a thousand mirrors. Every carnival has a ride or attraction rooted in awe and fear. Ask Geno Smith. Ask Joe Burrow. Ask any quarterback who lined up in front of Donald. Ask any offensive lineman or coach. To be in awe and to be in fear is twisted euphoria.

Sometimes the most charming individual in the room is the bully. American culture has long been enamored with figures who became mythical because their reputations preceded them.

Think of the late Tiny Lister’s legendary Friday role of “Deebo” (inspired by Eugene “Big U” Henley). Suge Knight. Monster Kody. Mike Tyson. Sonny Liston, pre-Cassius Clay. Marvel’s Thanos. The shark from Jaws. Star Wars’ Darth Vader or Marlo from The Wire. Or Javier Bardem’s haunting role as Anton Chigurh in the 2007 thriller No Country for Old Men.

Eventually, the mythology became more lasting than them all. Fair or not, this is how history remembers them and always will. By the time they appeared on screen, in the ring or even at events such as the 1995 Source Awards, they were already nightmares with legs.

Somewhere along the way, Donald became football’s version, not because he talked but because he stalked as only an apex predator could. He stalked quarterbacks. He discarded offensive linemen — some of the strongest, most brutally gifted athletes on Earth — like toddlers. He rerouted legacies. Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and the Cincinnati Bengals still hear Donald’s “RING ME!” battle cry from his game-winning sack in Super Bowl LVI.

This potential reunion isn’t rooted in nostalgia or desperation. The Rams and Donald don’t need each other. Boasting arguably the NFL’s most complete roster, they feature reigning MVP Matthew Stafford at quarterback, head coach Sean McVay, and Garrett anchoring the defense. Even without Donald, it’d be hard to find a significant hole on the 2026 Rams.

Meanwhile, Donald could never play another down and be a first-ballot Hall of Famer in Canton come 2029 — after being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame this year.  

Much like any Hollywood romance that refuses to go public yet clearly already is, neither side is trying very hard to hide it. In June, Donald told ESPN’s Pat McAfee that the trade for Garrett “got me thinking” about a return — one that would instantly place the two on a short list of dynamic pass-rushing duos.

Then a few weeks later, there was Donald working out at the Rams’ facility, in pads, to gauge his body’s reaction. And last week, an undeniably giddy McVay spoke of his former — and perhaps soon-to-be — superstar rusher, making it clear that a Donald return is not a matter of if, but when.

“We’ve loosely had some different timelines that are kind of temporary. I want to keep those between us just if something unforeseen happens, out of respect for [Donald] and the situation,” McVay said at Rams training camp at Loyola Marymount University. “But I know this: Things are going in the right direction. And if there’s an arrow, it’s trending upwards.”

Should Donald officially return to football, he isn’t temporarily placing retirement on the back burner simply because he misses the sport. It’s not even because these Rams are as close to a cheat code as realistically possible in today’s NFL.

It’s because history stopped whispering. 

The thought of a second ring — again in his home stadium — alters football history and Donald’s place in it.

Few conversations in sports waste more air or keystrokes than “ring chasing.” As if an athlete wanting to win championships by any means is a net negative to the experience of watching greatness unfold and write new chapters in real time simply because it doesn’t align with individual tastes. 

Championships, however, don’t define or even create immortality. Football’s Barry Sanders and baseball’s Barry Bonds are widely viewed as the best ever in their respective sports, and they combined to reach just one championship game/series.

Championships, instead, do something far more important. They simplify history for generations that’ll view Donald the way we now look at “Mean” Joe Greene or Reggie White. Dan Marino was the better quarterback when compared head-to-head to Terry Bradshaw. Nuance says Bradshaw obviously played on far better Steelers teams than Marino’s Dolphins. But Bradshaw’s four rings speak for him in rooms that Marino’s gaudy passing numbers simply cannot.

Right or wrong, not even nuance outlives history. Donald is playing for a spot in history that none of us can envision right now. A comeback — but really a successful one — could dictate how his dominance is immortalized to football fans who have yet to be born. That’s bigger than football. That’s making the most of a talent that has a ridiculously short shelf life.

Mythology isn’t built in an assembly line. Mythology is as close to a family heirloom as exists in a multibillion-dollar conglomerate like the NFL. Beyond the media rights and the superstars, the mythology carries the game in ways Instagram likes or social media never could. The NFL has it. The Super Bowl has it. Donald most certainly has it. A return to the NFL gives him an opportunity the game rarely affords, one that is so insanely difficult to achieve because so much has to work in one’s favor to even have the chance.

That’s the intoxicating part of painting on a blank canvas. No one knows who controls the brush: the man or the game.

The most lasting element of Donald’s mystique is fear. He needed no catchphrases, no podcasts, no weekly soliloquies. He didn’t need to convince himself he was the smartest man in the room — a task that often leads to elite levels of ignorance. Donald never had to explain himself, because the most powerful statements sometimes required no words. He walked it like he talked it, and then he walked even farther.

That journey may lead him back into football, or it could let him walk deeper into football’s eternity. Either way, Donald has earned the right to bask in his history unless the lure of more greatness convinces him to write another chapter.

But if Donald is cut from the same cloth as Suge, Darth, Marlo, Tyson and the rest, he has a chance none of them got: to go out on top. Everyone leaves, but few ever get to pick how. Going out on top is a seduction no elite athlete can resist. The fact that Donald — football’s boogeyman — still believes he can make a meaningful impact on this team with this opportunity says everything.

Some attractions never really close. Sometimes, all it takes is the right moment for the lights to come back on.

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