LOS ANGELES — Aaron Donald walked onto the field at the Los Angeles Rams’ practice facility on Sunday and glanced at 52 other players he’ll now call teammates. He took a moment to let it sink in.“Man, this is wild,” he told defensive back Quentin Lake.This is finally starting to feel real to Donald and to the Rams’ defenders. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year is back after two years of retirement.But as Donald, 35, spends the next couple of weeks ramping up to see if he can return to the first-team All-Pro level he was at in 2023, he also knows he’s not coming back to the same squad.This one is no longer looking at him to fill the impact lost by Jalen Ramsey in a post-Super Bowl retool. If he can get back to being a star again, he’ll be one of a few on a defense that’s been supercharged in a single offseason.Aaron Donald comes out of retirement to rejoin an 'all-in' RamsNate AtkinsIt’s a mystery what this will look like when Donald is ready to rush the passer from the interior as Myles Garrett crashes down from the edge and Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson play in coverage while seven other returning starters from a top-10 defense try to fit around them.This time, the unknown is exciting.“The first thing that goes through your mind is, ‘Teams probably hate us,'” Lake said. “All of these other teams probably hate us. We’re like the new Dodgers.”It’s hard to know exactly how dominant a defensive line with Garrett and Donald will be or how opposing offenses will react to it. The idea was so fascinating that the blockbuster trade for Garrett became the biggest factor in getting Donald to consider a return.“We’re teammates now,” Donald said with a grin. “Hopefully we can do some special things together.”It’s also never happened before. Garrett and Donald will represent the NFL’s first-ever pairing of two players with at least 100 career sacks and a 20-sack season under their belts, according to Sports Reference.When Donald last played for the Rams, the game plan was straightforward.“It brings clarity,” defensive lineman Kobie Turner said. “When I was playing with him (in 2023), and they slid the front to him, you knew what your job was and exactly how you have to execute it. When you have clarity, you’re able to use that clarity.“Sean (McVay) talks about, ‘Our clarity, their confusion.’ You’re able to play off of that, you’re able to know exactly what your task is and you’re able to play together as a full unit as well to create confusion for the offense.”But Garrett brought the same manipulation numbers to a Cleveland Browns defense that consistently finished in the top 10. That unit didn’t have as much help in the pass rush around him, which let Garrett play through those double-teams and sliding protections to still create 23 sacks in 2025, the most in a single season in NFL history.Now, the Rams will have two of them on the defensive line. Garrett will often play the right end position, over the left tackle, with Donald flanking him to the inside at the 3-technique spot. The two are big enough and athletic enough to be able to switch alignments at times, or to do so after the snap with stunts that loop Garrett inside and Donald around the edge. They can even line Garrett up over the center like a middle linebacker on an A-gap blitz, as the Browns did at times under defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.“That’s going to be the question: Where are they going to send the slide to? How are they going to be able to help?” Turner said.“If they want to play game and start switching up the slides and giving different people one-on-ones and giving Myles one-on-ones and oh, by the way, me and B.Y. (Byron Young) and (Braden) Fiske, that’s going to be trouble for them. They’re going to have to be able to figure out their plan at some point.”Donald and Garrett will command such attention that it’ll be easy to forget that Turner and Young have both racked up at least seven sacks in three straight seasons. Last year, Young played opposite Jared Verse as Verse began to command those sliding protections and double-teams, and Young responded to one-on-one matchups and quarterbacks bailing to his side with a 12-sack season and his first Pro Bowl appearance.He’s hungry for even more in a contract year.“I need to get to All-Pro,” Young said. “I need to be a guy where when it comes to that third down-and-long, and we need to have it, I come through. I’ll force a bad play or force a bad decision. That’s what it is for me. I want to be that guy where they look to find, ‘OK, we need a stop. We’re behind. Or we need to seal the deal.’ I want to be one of those crunch-time situation guys.”The Rams led the NFL last season in pressure rate out of four-man rushes, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, and that came without either Garrett or Donald.“You could almost rush just those two guys and drop everyone else back in coverage and see what happens,” Lake said. “That’d be pretty funny.”Unlike last year, the Rams are not asking the front four to create so much havoc that they have to overcome a lack of investment at outside cornerback. That model ended up becoming Los Angeles’ Achilles’ heel in the second half of last season and into the playoffs, as offenses found quick passes, downfield perimeter throws and perimeter runs that exposed slender cornerbacks Emmanuel Forbes Jr. and Cobie Durant.So when the Rams traded for a two-time All-Pro in McDuffie, as well as his Kansas City Chiefs running mate in Watson, they weren’t just adding two players with two Super Bowl titles. They were targeting specific archetypes of physical run stoppers and press-man coverage options.Their presence will force teams to stop chasing perimeter runs to escape Garrett and Donald, as well as nose tackle Poona Ford and linebacker Nate Landman, who arrived last season to shore up the middle of the run defense.Without easy quick throws against cornerbacks playing off coverage, more targets should come the way of Lake and strong safety Kam Curl, whom the Rams believed in enough to sign for $49 million combined in guarantees over the past year.Those two can then move around more to disguise their intentions and locations. Whereas the Rams have one question mark on defense at the cover linebacker spot, Curl could offer a replacement for Omar Speights in that spot when the Rams play in dime, as they did more than any other defense last season.Lake will be able to rotate from nickel cornerback to free safety to strong safety with the addition of McDuffie, who will slide inside at his best position at nickel at times in order to be closer to the ball. McDuffie has eight forced fumbles since he was drafted in 2022.The biggest beneficiary could be the starting defensive back the Rams have yet to pay. Kam Kinchens enters his third year at age 23, and he’ll play in more of a downhill attacking mode, chasing tips and overthrows from quarterbacks sped up by Garrett, Donald, Turner and Young while avoiding the physical coverage of McDuffie and Watson.A similar style allowed Kinchens to rack up 11 interceptions in his final two seasons at the University of Miami and four more as a rookie with the Rams in 2024, before he spent last season cleaning up more mistakes by outside cornerbacks.“To have a roster this talented is almost unheard of,” Lake said. “It’s important for us as a team to understand it’s every given Sunday, regardless of whether you have the talent or not. I have the true belief that we’re going to be able to continue to work and be able to do it.”Perhaps the greatest overall shift is the impact the additions of Garrett, Donald, McDuffie and Watson have had on the defense’s floor and optionality.Now, rather than covering No. 1 wide receivers, Forbes can slide into a third outside cornerback role as an option in dime sets when McDuffie slides inside. Pass rushers such as Fiske and Josaiah Stewart, who had a 17.3 percent pressure rate as a rookie last season, become part of the second wave to help keep Garrett and Donald fresh. The Rams also have safety Jaylen McCollough as a blitz option.“Over the past few years since I’ve been here, outside of Verse, we didn’t have that quote-unquote superstar on the defense,” Kinchens said. “It was just a bunch of guys playing together.”Now, the Rams hope they have a bunch of guys playing on one accord — in addition to three All-Pros leading the way. The expectations will be sky-high — Super Bowl or bust, some will say — but they’re ready to test those dreams on the biggest stages.