If\/when future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald resets the five-year clock on his induction to zero, he\u2019ll join a team that has nearly zero defensive starters from the last time he played.<\/p>\n
The only defensive starter who was on the team when Donald retired after the 2023 season is linebacker Byron Young.<\/p>\n
Looking at the roster more broadly, the Rams have only four players left from the team that won Super Bowl LVI to cap the 2021 season: tight end Tyler Higbee, tackle Alaric Jackson, center Coleman Shelton, and quarterback Matthew Stafford. Every defensive player from that team is gone (including, for now, Donald).<\/p>\n
Only six remain from the 2023 roster, with the four listed above, offensive lineman Kevin Dotson, and defensive tackle Larrell Murchison.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s another example of how dramatically NFL lineups change from one year to the next. Every season really is a one-year experience for each franchise. By the next year, many things will be very different.<\/p>\n
For Donald, despite being gone for only two years, he\u2019ll see only one familiar face on defense if\/when he puts his No. 99 uniform back on and takes the field.<\/p>\n
The good news is that the Rams have reloaded on the fly, with a team that has been a consistent playoff contender (except for 2022) and that is the favorite to win the Super Bowl without Donald. With Donald, some will say there\u2019s no reason to play the games.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s, as a wise man once said, why they play the games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If\/when future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald resets the five-year clock on his induction to zero,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-766782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}