Rams hope they drafted the right unit to replace Aaron Donald

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HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. -- As the Los Angeles Rams began to plan for life without Aaron Donald, one thing quickly became clear for general manager Les Snead.

"You're not going to replace Aaron Donald," Snead said at the league meetings in March. "Especially with one person. So, through this whole process, even as we went through the new defensive coordinator hire, it was talking through being able to play defense without someone who changes the math quite like him. That was our intent.

"That's always been the blueprint three years ago when you were like, when Aaron retires, there's not going to be another one of him. So we were going to have to play defense differently."

When Donald officially retired in March after 10 seasons and a Hall of Fame career that included three NFL Defensive Player of the Year Awards and a Super Bowl LVI victory, it was time for the front office to get to work replacing him.

Donald led the team with 45 pressures in 2023. The next-highest mark was rookie outside linebacker Byron Young. The Rams also got a strong contribution from Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate Kobie Turner, who led all rookies with nine sacks.

During the 2024 NFL draft, the Rams focused on that front seven, adding four players to it in their first six picks. Los Angeles used their first first-round pick since 2016 to draft Florida State edge rusher Jared Verse and paired him with former teammate defensive tackle Braden Fiske a round later. They also drafted Washington State edge rusher Brennan Jackson in the fifth round and Clemson defensive tackle Tyler Davis in the sixth.

"When you look at it, to be able to get two guys on the edge, two guys inside that we feel like can affect the game in a positive way, that was something that we had identified," head coach Sean McVay said after Day 3 of the draft. "Obviously, Aaron [Donald] creates a big void. You're never going to ask somebody to replace that void he created, but you can do that by the unit."

Snead said the Rams had been considering trying to pair Verse and Fiske if their draft board fell that way since the first week of the combine. The Rams traded up in the second round, giving up a 2025 second-round pick, to draft Fiske with No. 39.

"When we had our first meetings together with the coaches, and what you do know is those two players play urgently and violently, and you just knew that pairing them with Kobie [Turner], Byron [Young] [and] the rest of our defenders would be fun," Snead said.

Verse and Fiske played together for one season at Florida State, as Verse transferred from Albany in 2022 and Fiske transferred from Western Michigan in 2023. Verse said he and Fiske felt they'd just hit the point when they could just communicate on the field with a look toward the end of the season. And so the pair began to imagine a scenario where they were both drafted by the same team and got to play together. Verse called the moment "full circle," especially after he got to be on the phone with Fiske after Snead had told the defensive tackle that the Rams were trading up to draft him.

"We just have that connection," Verse said. "Now, we're bringing it into the NFL together. And now [I] feel it's going to be bad for opposing offenses."

And while the Rams also added to their secondary in the draft by taking safety Kamren Kinchens in the third round, McVay made it clear that he thinks if Los Angeles can get to the quarterback more often than they did a season ago, it will impact the entire defense.

"I think the biggest thing is if you can affect the quarterback and be physical at the line of scrimmage, it's going to make your second and third levels of the defense better just by those guys playing well," McVay said.

McVay pointed out that while the team finished last season with "a little bit of momentum" with a playoff run, thanks to a 7-1 finish to the season, the Rams know they can't just rely on that, especially because they will be missing the production and leadership of Donald.

"You want to use the confidence that a lot of the guys that played and earn that the right way, but also know, hey man, the work works, we're going to put it in every single day," McVay said. "There's going to be some different things that we can explore of how to really be able to push the envelope and do some things that are in alignment with where we feel like there's a lot of improvement and things that we can build off of."