{"id":808501,"date":"2026-08-10T01:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T01:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/808501\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T01:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T01:58:08","slug":"aaron-donald-decision-is-currently-expected-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/808501\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Donald decision is currently expected this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Donald continues to ponder whether he\u2019ll return to football after two years of retirement. And his play-or-don\u2019t-play decision is indeed coming soon.<\/p>\n

But apparently not quite as soon as recently expected.<\/p>\n

Donald\u2019s target, we\u2019re told, has shifted from early this week<\/a> to the end of this week. (Given the ramifications of a decision to return, Donald could take a little more time before making the decision to take the pigskin plunge.)<\/p>\n

The Rams have plenty of time to get Donald ready to go. They\u2019d deploy the same plan utilized in 2017 and 2018 to ramp him up after protracted contract holdouts. The Rams would want Donald to have a few weeks of football activities before playing, with the goal of 30-40 snaps in the Week 1 game against the 49ers in Australia.<\/p>\n

Unless Donald\u2019s workouts include the equivalent of football sparring sessions, he won\u2019t know how he moves in relation to other players until he\u2019s back on the practice field.<\/p>\n

Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor retired after realizing that the younger players seemed to be getting faster. His coach, Bill Parcells, told Taylor that he was getting slower. Unless and until Donald is practicing against other players, he won\u2019t be able to make that assessment. And that\u2019s an important factor, because Aaron Donald wants to be sure that he\u2019ll still be the Aaron Donald of old.<\/p>\n

Still, Donald currently seems to be planning to make the decision on whether to play before officially rejoining the Rams and participating in practice. And he\u2019ll be taking a bit more time to make that call.<\/p>\n

It remains hard to envision Donald putting in so much work only to not play. Until he decides to do it, however, there\u2019s a chance he\u2019ll decide not to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Donald continues to ponder whether he\u2019ll return to football after two years of retirement. And his play-or-don\u2019t-play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-808501","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\/808501","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=808501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}