Aaron Donald was immediately one of the best players in football when he first stepped foot on an NFL field, winning Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2014. He’s only gotten better with time, too, winning the last two Defensive Rookie of the Year awards.
He has a chance to win it again this season, but Stephon Gilmore might beat him out and prevent the three-peat. What Gilmore couldn’t do was prevent Donald from winning Pro Football Focus’ Defensive Player of the Year honor for the fourth time.
PFF announced that Donald has been named the best defensive player in the NFL for 2019, the second straight season he’s won the award. He also won it in 2015 and 2016, but he was edged by Harrison Smith in 2017.
Donald led all interior defenders with 80 pressures this past season, a number that was down from his otherworldly 106 pressures in 2018 and 91 the year before. His overall grade of 93.7 was well above every other interior defender, and significantly better than Gilmore’s 82.8 overall grade. T.J. Watt’s 91.3 did come close to Donald’s grade, though.
Any of those players would be a strong candidate for Defensive Player of the Year honors, but no single player was as consistently elite as Donald was every time he stepped on the field. It may be boring to hand the same award to the same player every year, but we shouldn’t be looking for reasons to stop doing so if that player earns it. Aaron Donald was once again the best defensive player in football, and he once again deserves the award.
Donald’s numbers were down from his historic 2018 season, but he still had 12.5 sacks, an NFL-high 20 tackles for loss and forced two fumbles. It’ll be hard for him to match the stat line he put up in 2018 when he had 20.5 sacks – the most ever by a defensive tackle – but with the trajectory he’s on, don’t ever doubt his potential.
Donald has been named a Pro Bowler six times and a first-team All-Pro five times in six seasons, which puts him on track for Canton someday.