SHOCKING: I want to leave, I can’t play for Rams anymore. Key player makes shocking decsion.

Sean McVay met Aaron Donald outside the visitors locker room at Detroit’s Ford Field.

The Rams’ 2023 season had ended with a playoff defeat, and McVay was near certain it was Donald’s final game.

“This is it,” McVay recalled saying as he greeted the three-time NFL defensive player of the year.

“Yep,” Donald replied, “This is it.”

Donald’s retirement last week made official what McVay and those throughout the Rams organization knew for weeks. Donald and McVay spoke at length the day after the playoff loss.

“You could really feel there was a sense of peace,” McVay said Tuesday at the NFL owners annual meeting, before jokingly adding, “Maybe we’ll see if he gets that appetite later on.”

With the Donald era over, McVay now faces a first: building a team without a certain first-ballot Hall of Fame defensive lineman.

“Are you ever going to ask somebody to replace Aaron Donald?” McVay said. “Hell no.”

McVay expects first-year defensive coordinator Chris Shula to devise a scheme that will offset the loss. Shula coached edge rushers, linebackers and defensive backs during seven seasons as a Rams assistant. He replaced Raheem Morris, now the coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

“You’re never going to replace the personality of Raheem Morris,” McVay said, “and I don’t want him to do that. I want him to be himself.”

The same goes for players, McVay said.