Whenever a new season begins in any sport, it’s usually the team that won the previous year’s championship that has the biggest target on their backs.
For the 2026 NFL season, it doesn’t seem to be the Seattle Seahawks, but rather the team they beat in the NFC Championship Game to reach the Super Bowl: the Los Angeles Rams.
Super teams are hard to come by when 53 men are stacked onto a roster, but the Rams have come pretty close entering the new campaign, with the reigning MVP Matthew Stafford leading the way on a high-powered offense, while LA revamped its defense with a pair of Defensive Players of the Year on the defense live.
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And one of them came out of retirement just to take another crack at winning another Super Bowl ring.
Aaron Donald, the 10-time Pro Bowl and eight-time First team All-Pro defensive tackle, officially ended his days outside football by rejoining the team he helped to win a Super Bowl in 2021. He joins Myles Garrett, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and new single-season sack record holder, whom the Rams acquired in a blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Browns this offseason.
If the Rams weren’t scary enough when Stafford & Co. have the ball in their hands, this combo strikes fear into the eyes of their opponents just by being on the schedule each week.
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The expectations and potential of what this combo could do to offenses in 2026 has got football players, coaches and fans in a collective whirlwind. And one former NFL star linebacker thinks the hype couldn’t be more real.
“Just insane. I mean, it’s insane because every week will be a pick-your-poison situation,” Shawne Merriman, All-Pro linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and Buffalo Bills, told OutKick in a recent interview. “Who do you want to focus on? Because the other one is going to make plays.”
“Me being in my situation when I played, I knew I was going to get a lot of slide protection and chips off the edge and things like that. But you can’t do it to both sides. They have enough playmakers that, if you leave those guys one-on-one, it’s going to be damaging.”
To Merriman’s point, offensive lines will have to choose who they wish to focus on when the ball is snapped. It’s nearly impossible to be able to pick up Garrett and Donald with 1-on-1 matchups at the line without getting beat and potentially blowing up the play.
There’s a reason the term “game wrecker” is used for certain players, and it’s been used time and time again for both Donald and Garrett throughout their respective careers.
For Garrett especially, Merriman thinks joining the Rams will unlock an extra gear fans might not believe they’d ever see.
“I want to add that people don’t understand, I give a lot of credit to our offense on my career because we were able to score so many points,” he explained. “I mean, Phil [Rivers], L.T. [LaDainian Tomlinson], [Antonio] Gates, we knew we were putting up points every game. So, what happens is, you pin your ears back and go when the score gets 14-3, or 17-6. You can pin your ears back and go as a pass rusher.
“Well, Myles Garrett, he never had that situation in Cleveland. He never had it with these guys in a decisive win, or teams had to throw the ball a lot because obviously you don’t want to throw the ball as much when Myles Garrett is sitting on the side. So, that’s the scary part. Now, he can just go because those games can get out of hand.”
As for Donald, Merriman was very confident in saying that he is “still a top three player at 80% of what he is,” which is what many have been echoing. As a defensive tackle, Donald was able to do things nobody at the position did on a consistent basis: get to the quarterback. He led the league in sacks in 2018 with 20.5, while totaling 111 over his future Hall of Fame career.
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He may have set that Hall of Fame clock back a few years by returning, but at 35 years old, Donald is still one of the craftiest, strongest, and elusive defensive tackles the NFL has ever seen. Merriman expects him to prove why he’s one of the greats in 2026.
“If he comes back and he’s the same player – I’m sure it’s going to take some time to get used to football movements and get going again. But Aaron Donald is still a top three player at 80% in the NFL, which is scary,” he said.
“You can’t comprehend what that looks like. We haven’t seen anything like this before, because Myles Garrett in his own right can go down as the best pass rusher of all time, at least at the defensive end position. I love Bruce Smith, he’s one of my favorite players. I wore No. 56 because of Lawrence Taylor, but before this thing is all said and done, [Garrett] can go down as the best on his own. And you gotta put Aaron Donald down as the one or two best D-tackles of all time.”
Of course, all of this is being said before the Rams even kick off in Melbourne tonight at 8:35 p.m. ET, where Donald won’t be playing with L.A. wanting to give him more time to ramp up before taking the field once again. But the Rams are pegged as a team that embodies the “Super Bowl or bust” mantra this season.
If they don’t make it there, what will the conversation be? Is it one of the biggest failures by a franchise in NFL history?
“Football is a finnicky sport, man. There’s been some ‘super teams’ in the past where it’s big names on paper and things just don’t go their way,” Merriman said. “But how they’re built and constructed, on both sides of the football by the way, it’s hard not to believe they end up, at the bare minimum, back in the NFC Championship Game this year.”