Aaron Donald won’t be making the trip with the Rams to Denver this week, but he has a good reason for it. Sean McVay said after Saturday’s game that Donald will stay back because his fourth child is due “any day.”
Donald wouldn’t have played in next week’s preseason finale anyway but he would have been on the field for the team’s joint practices with the Broncos had he made the trip to Denver.
This is also why Donald dressed for Saturday’s preseason game and went through warmups despite then changing into street clothes and predictably sitting out the contest. The Rams wanted to give him a dress rehearsal, knowing he wouldn’t be traveling to Denver this week.
“He’s got a baby that’s due any day and so he’s not going to make the trip to Denver and so we wanted to make sure that he got kind of his dress rehearsal, so that was the thought process there,” McVay said. “A lot of our guys that haven’t played in the preseason will go through that next week. I wanted to be able to get that done with him this week.”
Donald is the last player that needs preseason prep before Week 1 so his absence from practice this week isn’t anything to worry about. This is the same guy that skipped training camp and the first two games of the 2017 season due to his contract holdout and still won Defensive Player of the Year.
