Not yet five months removed from announcing his retirement, Aaron Donald was back with the Los Angeles Rams on Wednesday.
Only this time, it was merely to check up on his now-former squad and give some pointers to the defensive line contingent moving on without him.
Offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur was hoping for a grandiose return, one akin to a Wrestlemania comeback, but just seeing the future Hall of Famer was good enough.
"He just puts a smile on your face, right?,” LaFleur said, via team transcript. “Kind of hoping that like the ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin music would hit and he would come out with a jersey and he said, 'I'm back.' You're just happy to see him. The guys, all of them, not just the D-line are. You say, 'How you doing?' He says, ‘I'm healthy.’ It just puts such a smile on your face. That's what you do it for."
Donald decided to hang it up this offseason following a decade of dominance that included helping the Rams to two Super Bowl appearances and one Lombardi Trophy.
In his final season, he helped along young talent such as Kobie Turner. This time around, he was offering wisdom to rookies he won’t share the field with, such as Jared Verse and Braden Fiske.
“It's great to see him,” defensive coordinator Chris Shula said. “The cool thing was seeing him give some tips to Fiske and I'm standing there listening. So, it was really good to see him. Great to have him out here.”
Luring Donald back into action is never far from Shula -- or likely any other Rams coach’s mind -- of course. However, Shula wouldn’t mind having him back as a coach, either.
“Of course. Think about that every day, and he is all over our cut up, so we see him all the time,” Shula said of Donald coming back to play. “I know he is in a great spot and [had] such a great career. He has earned the right to do whatever he wants right now. So, he's welcome back anytime. Anytime he wants to come coach and help out, he knows the door's always open.”
Donald has begun his trip to Canton, Ohio, in five years, but stopping in at a Rams practice is clearly always welcomed.