Rams’ Aaron Donald: Football without fans ‘wouldn’t be fun’
LOS ANGELES — Aaron Donald is not thrilled about the prospect of playing football without fans.
The Los Angeles Rams’ superstar defensive lineman doesn’t like the idea of playing an NFL season in front of empty seats, saying it “wouldn’t be fun to me.”
“I feel like you need fans to play the game,” Donald added Thursday on a video conference call from his offseason home in Pittsburgh. “I don’t see how you could play a game without the fans. I feel like that takes out the excitement and the fun out of the game.”
Donald realizes his opinion won’t carry much weight if the coronavirus pandemic forces the NFL to take extraordinary measures to provide a television product to the world. But the six-time Pro Bowl selection is among those sportsmen worldwide who don’t really see the point of continuing with their professions while large crowds are unable to gather safely.
“I feel like the fans pick you up,” Donald said. “The fans are what makes the game exciting. The fans would give you that extra juice when you’re tired and fatigued. When you make that big play and you hear 80,000 fans going crazy, that pumps you up. If you don’t have that in the game, I think that just takes the fun out of it.”
The possible realities of a pandemic year are coming home for Donald and the Rams, who haven’t reopened their training complex while conducting their spring work online. Donald is used to missing offseason workouts with his teammates, thanks to two contract holdouts that eventually ended with his mammoth six-year, $135 million extension in August 2018.
Donald usually spends much of his offseason working out at Pitt, where the Aaron Donald Football Performance Center is at his disposal for obvious reasons.
But with the university shut down due to the pandemic, Donald said he has been working out “back where it all started” in The Dungeon — his nickname for the tiny basement of his father’s home. He’s lifting weights three days a week for at least two hours a day alongside his nephew, a high school defensive lineman.
Donald has still been busy with his school, however: He recently finished his communications degree, joining his brother and sister as college graduates.
“I’ve been taking classes for the past couple of years here and there, online classes,” said Donald, who headed to the NFL in 2014. “It’s a promise I made to my mom and dad. When I got drafted, I promised my mom and dad that I’d still get the degree, because that’s what they wanted. It took a while, but I accomplished it. They were proud of me. I’m just glad and relieved that I’m finally done.”
Donald will head back to the West Coast eventually, but he is getting plenty of screen time with his new teammates and with the Rams’ coaching staff, including new defensive coordinator Brandon Staley. Donald is optimistic about the direction of the Rams’ defense, although he is getting eager to get onto a football field so he can learn Staley’s schemes alongside his teammates.