LOS ANGELES (AP) — After two seasons out of football, Aaron Donald has been pleasantly surprised by how his body has reacted since rejoining the Los Angeles Rams last month.
Whether it means the three-time Associated Press Defensive Player of the Year will be ready to play in the Rams’ season opener against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday morning local time is still unclear.
“We going day by day,” Donald said. “(We’ll) Come up with a game plan and see what’s going on. But feeling good. Feeling really good.”
Donald did not practice Monday, which he described as a scheduled day off. Such breaks were frequently built into his game week to reduce wear and tear in later years during the 10 seasons of his first stint with the Rams. They are likely to again be a regular feature now that Donald is 35 years old and hasn’t played in an NFL game since a NFC wild-card round loss to the Detroit Lions in January 2024.
For Donald, everything is about putting himself in position to be as effective as possible in meaningful action. He is still holding himself to the same standard that led to 111 sacks in 154 regular-season games and eight first-team All-Pro honors.
“Even with my first day out there with 11-on-11, I thought things would be a little all over the place, but (I) settled in, settled in. A couple plays was a little rusty. It ain’t where I want to be, but it’s pretty damn good,” Donald said.
“If you ask me, you know, to not play football in two years, to be moving how I’m moving, like I said, it’s really no drop off.”
Defensive coordinator Chris Shula said the opportunity to have a player with Donald’s resume is worth navigating the uncertainty of his status for this game.
“It’s a challenge I’ll take any time,” Shula said. “No, we’re taking it day by day, and we’re just trying to get him acclimated to the defense. But at the end of the day, football is football. I know it’s been about two years, but we kind of expect him to hit the ground running, and we’ll see what happens.”
Shula said the Rams are accounting for all possibilities when it comes to Donald's availability at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
“We’re ready for him if he does (play), ready for him if he doesn’t, and we’ll have a plan for however many plays he feels like he can go, and we’ll go from there,” Shula said.
The only thing that seems to be clear is neither Donald nor Shula expect him to be a every-down player at this stage of his career. After being used on 867 (80.8%) of the Rams' defensive snaps in the 2023 regular season, Donald will likely be focusing on getting to the quarterback alongside star pass rusher Myles Garrett, whose acquisition in June first sparked his interest in coming out of retirement.
The Rams have plenty of quality interior linemen to reduce Donald's workload, including Kobie Turner, Poona Ford and Braden Fiske.
“That’s the best thing about it, I don’t have to worry about playing 70, 60 snaps when you have a group like this,” Donald said. "There’s no pressure on me. I can just go out there, play free, play ball. Let the game come to me, play with the guys around me. Help them, they help me. Hopefully we have a lot of success this season.”
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Aaron Donald takes the field for practice at the Los Angeles Rams' training complex in Los Angeles, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Greg Beacham)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Flights to and from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta resumed early Tuesday after ash from a volcanic eruption forced a two-day closure that halted nearly 3,000 flights.
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport serving Jakarta, Husein Sastranegara Airport in West Java’s Bandung city and two smaller airports in Banten province reopened just after midnight, Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said.
Three other airports remained closed until 10 a.m., including Radin Inten II Airport in Lampung on the southern tip of Sumatra island, despite improving conditions. Atung Bungsu Airport in Pagar Alam in South Sumatra province had resumed normal operations Monday morning.
“We are taking a conservative approach because wind direction is highly dynamic,” Purwagandhi said in a statement. “We want to ensure that volcanic ash has moved away from airports around Anak Krakatau.”
Although tests at several airports showed no traces of volcanic ash, the extended closures would allow time for inspecting and cleaning surfaces and equipment like runways, taxiways and aircraft that may have been exposed to volcanic ash, Purwagandhi said.
The continuous eruption of Anak Krakatau with lava fountains and loud booms ended Sunday but the volcanic island remained active Tuesday morning. Eruptions were reported at 5:08 a.m. and 5:34 a.m., though the height of the ash column could not be observed.
The airport closures Sunday and Monday disrupted nearly 2,961 flights, including 622 international services, and affected about 341,000 passengers.
The government also authorized schools in areas affected by volcanic ash to shift temporarily to online learning to reduce students’ exposure to ash.
Anak Krakatau is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Indonesia’s main islands of Java and Sumatra. Its name means “child of Krakatau,” and the volcano is the offspring of the infamous Krakatau, whose monumental 1883 eruption triggered a period of global cooling.
An eruption of Anak Krakatau in 2018 caused a tsunami that killed at least 430 people in Sumatra and Java. Researchers believe volcanic activity triggered an underwater landslide and caused a large chunk of Anak Krakatau’s southwest slope to collapse and displace a large volume of water.
The volcano remained at Indonesia’s second-highest alert level since July, and authorities advised residents, tourists and fishermen to stay at least 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the active crater.
Indonesia has more than 120 active volcanoes and frequently experiences eruptions due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the ring of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most global seismic activity occurs.
In this drone photo released by the Geological Agency (Badan Geologi) of Indonesia's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Mount Anak Krakatau spews volcanic smoke in Sunda Strait, Indonesia, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. (Badan Geologi via AP)
A man walks past an information board showing cancelled flights due to the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau, at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Indonesia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
A technician measures the seismic readings from the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau at an observation post in Pasauran, Banten province, Indonesia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dziki Oktomauliyadi)
People wait as flights are disrupted due to the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau, at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Indonesia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
