Aaron Donald is currently in his seventh NFL season. In each of his first six, he was selected to the Pro Bowl, and in five of those seasons, he was a first-team All-Pro. He’s a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, led the league in sacks in 2018 and is already up to 8.0 sacks through seven games this season.
He’s gotten to the point where we just expect greatness from him because he so regularly delivers an outstanding level of play. He’s a Defensive Player of the Year candidate every season and in Jalen Ramsey’s mind, he could win it each year.
“He could win it every year, probably, in my opinion. It’s starting to get to the point where everyone knows he’s the best, so no matter how great he does, people sometimes don’t look at it as, ‘Wow, that’s amazing’ because they’re getting used to it.”
Ramsey likened it to what happens in the NBA with stars, specifically LeBron James and with Kobe Bryant during his playing days. Fans and analysts get so accustomed to seeing greatness on the court that they don’t realize how good those players truly are.
It’s kind of like what happens to basketball players sometimes – what happened to Kobe and LeBron. What happens to LeBron all the time, he’s the best player and Most Valuable Player a lot of the time but it’s kind of expected so it isn’t glorified as much as it should be, in my opinion. But AD should probably be Defensive Player of the Year every year.”
"@AaronDonald97 should probably be Defensive Player of the Year every year… he's that good and everybody knows he's that good." – @jalenramsey pic.twitter.com/sDGVZaxPeM
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) October 30, 2020
Donald was asked Thursday if he feels he’s on pace to win the coveted award again, but he doesn’t think about individual accolades. He just wants to win games, and ideally a Super Bowl.
“Honestly, my main focus is trying to just win,” Donald said. “The only thing I didn’t accomplish I felt like, is a Super Bowl, so that’s my only thing, is trying to do everything I can to help this team to win and get back to the Super Bowl and this time win it. It’s a long journey, a long process, a lot of work to do to get there, so we’re going to week-to-week just trying to do as much as I can to win games.”
Donald is the betting favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year again this season, which would be his third time. If he does that, you can all but rest assured he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.