The Rams have a defensive lineman who constantly faces double- and triple-teams in games. For the first time, the Rams are preparing him for that eventuality during training camp.
“Nobody plays him different than that, you know?” coach Sean McVay told reporters on Monday. “So it’s not quite that simple, but you’re making adjustments and you’re aware of where he’s at, just like every single team that we play. So, he’s that good that I think most teams every week, the first thing that they talk about is, ‘Where’s Waldo? Find 99. Make sure that you have an answer for him.’ So that’s what we would do if we played him too. I think you want to try . . . in all seriousness, what happens is, if you don’t, you get very unrealistic looks for some of the things that he’s able to do for the rest of his teammates on the defensive side of the ball. So every single day is a new day, but he does a great job of kind of understanding what the intent is. Some days that can be an emphasis and then other days we might play it a little bit differently. But he’s special and so he’s got to be accounted for even in practice.”
Donald’s skills do indeed reveal themselves at Rams practices. Several years ago, G.M. Les Snead explained in a visit to #PFTPM during a contract-related absence from Donald that it allowed the team to properly practice because he was so dominant that he even blew up walk-through drills.
Over the weekend, Donald was asked about his own team using “slide” protection against him, and whether he had seen that before in practice.
“Not this much,” Donald said. “It’s just typically one-on-one. They stay true to the slide, but it’s a different type of year. So I appreciate the work and at the end of the day it isn’t going to do nothing but make me better.”
The good news (for Donald and perhaps the coaches) is he knew it was coming.
“Yeah, the coaches told me they were going to slide every single play, so I was kind of mad because you want to be able to work different things,” Donald said. “But it’s realistic so I appreciate him doing that for me, allowing me to make my job hard at practice and making me study a little longer at night. Trying to find things that I need to do better and what I could do to try to defeat a hard slide protection and things like that. So it isn’t going to do nothing but make me better.”
That’s a scary thought, given that Donald is already one of the NFL’s best at what he does. And if he can stay healthy after missing six games due to injury in 2022, the Rams could instantly become a playoff contender, despite a dramatic fall from the upper level of the conference the year after winning the Super Bowl.
