4 questions 49ers must answer vs. Rams in NFC Championship
By Peter Panacy
Question No. 2: Can 49ers ‘keep it up’ against Aaron Donald?
Aaron Donald is arguably the best player in the game right now, and even fullback Kyle Juszczyk told us so when he appeared on the Niner Noise Podcast just before Week 10’s game between these two teams.
Donald is another one of those LA players capable of taking a game over. But for whatever the reasons, he hasn’t quite been his dominant self against the Niners as of late.
Take a look at his game logs against San Francisco dating back to the 2019 season:
| Tack | Tack | Tack | Tack | Tack | Def | Fumb | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Year | Date | Week | Age | Tm | Opp | Result | Sk | Solo | Ast | Comb | TFL | QBHits | PD | FF | |
| Rk | Year | Date | Week | Age | Tm | Opp | Result | Sk | Solo | Ast | Comb | TFL | QBHits | PD | FF | |
| 11 | 2019 | 2019-10-13 | 6 | 28.143 | LAR | SFO | L 7-20 | 2.0 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | |
| 12 | 2019 | 2019-12-21 | 16 | 28.212 | LAR | @ | SFO | L 31-34 | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 13 | 2020 | 2020-10-18 | 6 | 29.148 | LAR | @ | SFO | L 16-24 | 0.0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 14 | 2020 | 2020-11-29 | 12 | 29.190 | LAR | SFO | L 20-23 | 1.0 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | |
| 15 | 2021 | 2021-11-15 | 10 | 30.176 | LAR | @ | SFO | L 10-31 | 0.0 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 16 | 2021 | 2022-01-09 | 18 | 30.231 | LAR | SFO | L 24-27 | 0.0 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com
Generated 1/28/2022.
Good enough numbers, yes. And there’s no questioning Donald made an impact in each of those games.
But he didn’t quite take over any of those contests as he has in other matchups against other teams. Perhaps it’s a credit to right guard Daniel Brunskill, who despite his struggles at other times, seems to have whatever it takes to figure out how to negate Donald’s prowess to an extent.
Or, maybe, it’s just one of those odd circumstances where Donald doesn’t quite “get up” as much against the 49ers compared to other matchups.
Whatever the case might be, it would be in the Niners’ best interests to ensure Donald isn’t anything close to a game-changing X-factor on Sunday.