Donald's Return Doesn't Fix the Architecture. It Papers Over It.

Braden Fiske recorded five sacks across 18 games last season. Five. For a team that invested heavily in defensive infrastructure — trading for Myles Garrett before he went down, pursuing Aaron Donald's return with enough urgency that Sean McVay was publicly flagging it as trending in the right direction — that number is the quiet indictment sitting beneath all the celebration of Donald's comeback. A pass rush doesn't live or die on one player's production. It lives or dies on whether the players around him can make opposing offensive coordinators account for more than one threat. Right now, the evidence says they cannot.

I wrote last week that one Hall of Famer cannot carry a pass rush, and Donald's presence in the lineup doesn't change the underlying argument — it actually sharpens it. The Rams' edge depth chart lists Josaiah Stewart as the primary option opposite whatever Donald provides from the interior. Stewart has been the subject of two pieces in recent weeks precisely because his résumé at this level remains thin. The Rams need him to become something he hasn't yet been. That's a real ask, and Donald's return doesn't reduce it by a single snap.

Here's the structural problem: the Rams lost Garrett — their designated centerpiece of the rebuilt defense — early enough that the entire defensive identity had to be reconceived on the fly. Donald's return fills a gap, but it fills the wrong gap. What this defense was missing with Garrett on IR was a credible edge threat who could win one-on-one, force quick throws, and give the secondary time to work. Donald, even at his best in this second act, is an interior disruptor. He collapses pockets from the inside. That's genuinely valuable. But it doesn't solve the problem Garrett's absence created on the perimeter.

The Rams' close-game failures in 2025 — winning fewer than half their one-possession games — weren't primarily an offensive problem. Stafford threw for 5,643 yards and 52 touchdowns. The offense was elite. What broke down in tight games was the defense's inability to manufacture stops when the margin for error disappeared. A pass rush that can't generate consistent pressure without its best player healthy is exactly the kind of structural fragility that shows up in the fourth quarter of a seven-point game. Donald can help at the margins. He cannot be the solution to a problem that is, at its core, about depth and redundancy.

My read is this: the Rams are running a calculated risk, betting that Donald's return plus Stewart's development plus whatever Fiske can add as a complementary piece is enough to hold the line until the defense finds its footing. That might be sufficient to navigate a regular season. It almost certainly isn't enough to win playoff football against an offense that can game-plan specifically for Donald's interior pressure and simply move the pocket to his left and right. The architecture was built for Garrett. Garrett is gone. Papering over that with a returning legend makes for a great story. It doesn't make for a fixed defense.