Aaron Donald has been consistently one of the most feared players on the defensive side of the ball. With over 85.5 sacks for his career, he should be in the conversation with Lawrence Taylor, JJ Watt and others and only having been in the league for 8 years it should be very impressive with what he’s done in a short amount of time. Here is some of his career stats so far.
And here is some of Lawerence Taylor’s stats as comparison.
And while Taylor earned the NFL’s MVP Award in 1986 after his 20.5 sack season. The MVP Award is a quarterback dominated award at this point. It says a lot that Donald didn’t receive a single MVP vote after his 20.5 sack season. But I feel like it should be a more defensive award because we’re always seeing QBs with the award from Manning to Brady to Rodgers to Mahomes, but with the defense it should be the leader that stepped up and made everyone better while improving on himself and that is what Aaron Donald is as a leader. As it stands, Donald needs to still pass Warren Sapp to become the NFL’s all-time defensive tackle sack leader. Sapp has 96.5 career sacks. It’s possible that Donald could surpass that this season. If Donald can become the first defensive line to reach 100 career sacks, that will be quite the achievement. While he still has a lot to reach the GOAT defensive status, even though he did turn 30 this year still has plenty of time to catch up and pass Lawerence Taylor as one of the best defensive players of all time.
