The parade for the championship went a mere 1.1 kilometres. However, Aaron Donald’s thoughts strayed from the boisterous celebration as he danced, drank, shouted, blew kisses, and displayed his cartoonish muscles. The cheerful hero and his Rams teammates rode six double-decker buses out of the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, snaking along Figueroa Street and crawling towards the Coliseum as thousands of people yelled and chanted at them.
Donald bounced and sipped and hugged along the route, his gold chain and diamond-studded “99” pendant flopping from neck to chin. So much had aligned to make the party possible. Stay in the moment, he reminded himself. He wished to remember the details of that day forever, so he waved away potential distractions such as his future, the subject of an endless discussion. Retire or return?
At that moment, and in the days that followed, Donald transformed from the NFL’s most feared defender into the human embodiment of Disneyland. He seemed like the happiest man on Earth. He drew from the crowd’s energy, downing champagne, whiskey and cognac. He never did put the shirt back on.
In this crucible of competing emotions—“juiced” by a splendid present, reflecting on a predictive past and not yet ready to plot an undetermined future—Donald leaned in close to team owner Stan Kroenke and told him that he loved him. He shouted, “World champs!” over and over and apologized (unnecessarily) for his slurred speech.
That same week, the exultation continued unabated. Donald went on The Late Late Show With James Corden; he wore sunglasses, continued to imbibe and proved he could skip rope and throw a football through a tire (he did not fare as well in the limbo). He hosted family and friends for dinner at Delilah, the Roaring ’20s–themed hot spot in West Hollywood. He flew to Miami for Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s 45th birthday bash. And he attended his first Lakers game, sitting courtside, galvanizing the crowd and high-fiving LeBron James. The superstars met briefly afterward, and Donald is still processing what James told him: “You’re the greatest defensive player I’ve ever seen.”
For weeks, teammate Von Miller had told Donald, “There’s nothing better than football heaven,” meaning the glorious championship aftermath. As Donald basked in actual sun and metaphorical glow, he finally understood. After eight seasons, contract holdouts, a historic extension, the Rams’ move from St. Louis to L.A. and everything else, one of the greatest players in the history of football had, at last, the only accomplishment he lacked. He thought back to Pittsburgh, his hometown: the close friend who was murdered, the other friends who went to prison and the family that both sheltered and shaped him, starting with 4:30 a.m. workouts in The Dungeon—what his father, Archie, named their basement.
“I’m still living in the moment,” Donald says, nine days after the Super Bowl triumph, his words accurate and incomplete. That’s because no matter where he goes or what he does, the question strangers, teammates and James asked lingers, even in football heaven: What’s next?
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