In 1991, a young father from Pittsburgh bought a set of weights from a retiring powerlifter. Archie Donald paid $1,300 for the whole lot and spread it out on the floor of his basement. He instructed his little boys, Aaron and Archie, to sit on the steps and watch him lift. "I wanted them to be exceptional," Archie Donald said. "I wanted them to be alpha males." Aaron was so small at this time that he was wearing Pampers. But the toddler watched, mostly with a blank face, then messed around in the basement like little kids do.
Nine years passed, and Aaron Donald looked less than exceptional. He was chubby, kept to himself and was not particularly diligent about his chores, which consisted of sweeping the steps and taking out the garbage. One day, his dad came home and noticed his youngest son was out riding his bike while his chores remained unfinished. Archie was about to scold him, but then Aaron winced in fear.
The elder Donald never wanted his kids to be afraid of him, so he decided on a different approach. Come Monday, he told him, Aaron was going to start lifting weights with him in the basement, before school, at 4:30 in the morning. If Aaron saw some results in his work, Archie figured, maybe he'd keep going. A little bit of time passed, and Archie started hearing a knock on his door at 4 in the morning. It was Aaron waking him up.
"I went from pushing him to him pushing me," Archie said.
"You see how the tides roll?"
The NFL's Steph Curry
He is a baby-faced He-Man now, stronger than a father could dream, and in just his second season in St. Louis, Aaron Donald has evolved into, arguably, the NFL's most dominating defensive lineman not named J.J. Watt, though some already have him on par with Watt. Donald's speed is scaring the bejesus out of opposing offensive coordinators, but the more frightening notion is being an offensive lineman and winding up on one of those Donald "Did you see that?" videos on YouTube. His head coach, Jeff Fisher, thinks so highly of him that he is comparing him to Reggie White.
Donald plays a position that is often overlooked on a play-to-play basis, but new forms of analysis help. Pro Football Focus, for instance, a site that grades NFL players on every play, sees a superstar. According to its analysis, Donald isn't just the highest-graded defensive lineman in the league for the first four weeks of the season, outperforming Watt. He's grading higher than any defensive tackle in the past eight years.
Pro Football Focus isn't alone.
"I don't know analytics like that," Rams' defensive end Chris Long said, "I just think if you turn on tape, that's possible. J.J.'s a once-in-a-lifetime player, and we look at J.J. on film and we're always like, 'Man, that guy is unbelievable.' But I'm sure other people look at Aaron and say the same thing. It's just that Aaron hasn't been doing it as long.
"Could he be a J.J.-type guy? It's too early to tell, but for [four] games, hell yeah, he can be that good. He's been that good."
Donald is doing all these things despite being barely 6-foot-1 and 285 pounds, which is considered a runt in defensive tackle circles. When he was drafted as the 13th overall pick last year by the Rams, his teammates started calling him Ted, after the bear from the Mark Wahlberg movie, because Donald has a sweet face and looks cuddly. Donald, obviously, loathed this nickname.
He is sort of the NFL's version of Steph Curry, underwhelming in street clothes and even his No. 99 uniform, which does nothing to make him look bigger. But then four quarters pass, and his opponents are gassed and sore and ask themselves, "I just got beat by that guy?"
"Could he be a J.J.-type guy? It's too early to tell, but for [four] games, hell yeah, he can be that good. He's been that good." Rams DE Chris Long on teammate Aaron Donald
Perhaps it's his size, or the Rams' market, that have caused Donald to be a relative unknown despite being named the 2014 defensive rookie of the year. He doesn't talk much and doesn't jump into your living room every night with Gatorade and cellphone commercials, a la Watt.
"I don't think he does anything," Rams offensive tackle Rodger Saffold said of Donald. "He literally is at work or home. I've never seen him outside of the football facility."
A quick sampling of Donald's work, for those who have missed it:
In the 2014 season finale against Seattle, Donald lifted Seahawks guard James Carpenter off the ground and tossed him. Carpenter weighs 320 pounds.
During his college days with the University of Pittsburgh, in a game against Duke, Donald was bearing down on a read-option play as the quarterback was handing off to his running back. Donald couldn't figure out who had the ball, so he tackled both of them at the same time.
He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.68 seconds at the combine, which was the fastest official time for a defensive tackle since 2000. As Fisher and general manager Les Snead watched him zoom around in agility drills, they joked about playing him at cornerback.
He won the Lombardi, Outland, Bronko Nagurski and Bednarik trophies, the first man to sweep the awards since Ndamukong Suh, and when he was finished with the banquet tour, Donald arrived back at school around midnight. He was lifting weights the next morning at 8.
So Donald likes to pump iron, but so do hundreds of others in the NFL. He doesn't necessarily subscribe to the "chip on my shoulder" tale, even though he received just four scholarships coming out of high school, and three of them were from Akron, Toledo and Rutgers. So how does a smallish 24-year-old become one of the NFL's most disruptive forces?
"I think with any great player, some of it is if we knew, everybody would copy it," Long said. "If we understood, I think everybody would try to be a Donald."
Making believers
They didn't need any other reasons to fall in love with Donald -- How can you not be smitten with a guy who had 28½ tackles for loss his senior season, five more than anyone else in the nation? -- but one thing that he said really stuck with Snead.
Snead was sitting with Donald during an interview and asked how he'd overcome his limitations. Donald didn't even blink and said, "I don't think they're limitations at all."
Being a little lighter, Donald figured, made him quicker than most offensive linemen. And being shorter gave him leverage on the bigger guys.
"I've got leverage on a guy that's 6-6, and I'm strong enough to push 600-plus pounds off on a double-team," Donald said. "So just having that leverage on the ball makes it harder for these guys trying to bend down and block a guy that's 6-1. I think it's an advantage, if anything."
And the no recruitment thing? That was fine with Donald, too. He always wanted to go to Pitt anyway, all the way back to when he was a little boy. Donald won so many trophies that Pitt had to build a special case for him. He probably wouldn't have gotten that if he'd gone to Penn State or some SEC school.
The player Donald is most compared to is John Randle, who made it to the Hall of Fame via Texas A&M-Kingsville. Randle had nearly the exact dimensions as Donald, and both men possess what Rams defensive line coach Mike Waufle calls "extreme suddenness," the ability to beat blockers in a camera flash.
As it turns out, Donald was indeed gifted. His arms are the equivalent length to that of a player who is 6-3 or 6-4. He is so fast that when Waufle and defensive end William Hayes popped in game film of Donald before the draft, they thought they were looking at a highlight reel.
"When he arrived here, he sat behind me in the meeting room," Waufle said, "and I told him, 'I'm going to say a lot of things in this room; I'm going to teach a lot of different techniques. I don't want you to listen to one word that I say. I want you to continue to play just like you did at Pitt.'
"I've never done that with a rookie, but I trusted him. He was already such a programmed, instinctive football player. Why screw him up?"
His instincts come in part from watching an enormous amount of film. Hayes estimates Donald watches at least twice as much as is required. At the end of training camp last year, Long came in to watch some tape when no one was around, but Donald was already there, "hogging the computer," Long said. After a loss to the Steelers last month, Donald's family was in town, but the first thing he did that night was go to the projector and watch film with his brother Archie.
And almost immediately, Donald commanded the respect of the veterans. It helped that he didn't talk much. Veterans like that. But what made him even more popular was the thought that he could help the Rams win. Donald had nine sacks, two forced fumbles and 47 tackles in 2014, and he was one of just three rookies to be named to the Pro Bowl.
"He showed a lot of maturity," said La'Roi Glover, a six-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle who's now the team's director of player engagement. "Oftentimes you get guys still trying to figure the game and themselves out. He was one of those guys we really didn't have to worry too much about. Typically, we start meetings at 7:30 or 8. He's always here at 6:30 or 7."
Working on a legacy
Donald's older brother Archie has an unscientific thought on the secret to Aaron's success. When they were kids, they used to watch the commercials that said milk would make them big and strong. So their mom, Anita Goggins, was constantly going to the store because the boys collectively chugged at least six gallons of it a week. They used to joke then that it would be cool if they could someday do one of those "Got Milk?" endorsements.
Aaron wants to do some commercials but hasn't been approached by anyone on a national level yet. His teammates laugh at the prospect of Donald, the man of few words, trying to be funny as he pitches Old Spice or car insurance.
Donald does have a restaurant/bar of his own that opened in the offseason. It's located on the Pitt campus and is called AD's Pittsburgh Café. Aaron runs it with his brother Archie. Chris Long was one of his first customers -- he stopped by after a rough night at a Kenny Chesney concert and ordered the chicken salad. During the offseason, Aaron is at the restaurant every day.
The younger Archie grew into a standout football player himself, starring at Toledo, getting a shot with the Cleveland Browns but injuring his shoulder during training camp. Both boys idolized their dad. On Saturdays, they'd dress up in little uniforms and help him with his commercial-cleaning business. "Be the best you can," their dad would tell them. It sounded cheesy, but it drove them.
"He was already such a programmed, instinctive football player. Why screw him up?" Rams defensive line coach Mike Waufle
Aaron kept lifting weights and liked how it made him feel. Like he was good at something.
The elder Archie says that even when Donald was a kid, coaches would stick double- and triple-teams on him, and nobody could stop him. This past Sunday, the Rams went to undefeated Arizona, which sent its own double-teams Donald's way. It wasn't a remarkable game by Donald's standards, but the Cardinals' attention to Donald helped free up his teammates. St. Louis surrendered just one touchdown and upset the Cardinals 24-22. It was easily Arizona's worst offensive performance of the season.
In the locker room afterward, Donald quietly put on his camouflage pants and a black hoodie and slipped out of the building. He'd conversed with his dad a few hours before that, shortly before kickoff. Archie said Aaron thanked him for making him get up at 4 and lift weights in a room they affectionately call "The Dungeon."
"You are what you are because you did it," Archie replied. "You took it from there."
Donald's dad said he has a grandson he's training now in his basement. The kid is little, but Archie promises in a few years, you'll know who he is.
"We're working on a legacy there," he said. "It was the best $1,300 I've invested in my whole life."