Inside the recruitment of Aaron Donald: How Pitt found an underrated gem who turned into a Super Bow
Standing in the back of the end zone at Penn Hills High School, Demond Gibson tried to pass the time before practice began. As the defensive line coach for the varsity football team, Gibson couldn’t do much until the group of middle-schoolers playing on their field wrapped up their game.
What could’ve been a forgettable moment on a Thursday afternoon instead became a story Gibson now tells anyone who asks. What he saw that day was an eighth-grader who bowled over offensive linemen and constantly harassed the quarterback. The kid was so forceful, strong and quick that Gibson, a Penn Hills and Pitt defensive lineman in the 1990s, couldn’t believe it.
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“It was like he was 27 years old playing against 3-year-old kids. It was unreal,” Gibson said. “I was like Pavlov’s dog at that point.”
That afternoon will forever be remembered by Gibson as the first time he watched Aaron Donald on a football field.
That first impression led to four years of coaching as he helped to refine Donald’s technique at Penn Hills. It has since extended to a friendship between the NFL superstar, who will play for the Rams in Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Bengals, and his high school position coach. The two still talk weekly, with Gibson continuing to hype up a player he still holds in awe. If only everyone else saw in Donald the same traits Gibson observed early on.
“The first two to three steps that he displays now was something that I hadn’t seen before,” Gibson said. “I knew he would be a special talent, but to sit here and say that, you know, I knew that he would be the greatest in the world? That’s a far reach.”
Long before Donald became the All-Pro who now romps across TV screens and through some of the NFL’s best offensive linemen, he was the undersized gem of Pitt’s 2010 recruiting class. A three-star prospect, Donald was ranked 353rd nationally and 12th in Pennsylvania in the 247Sports Composite.
Those facts still elicit a chuckle from Gibson, though he understands why Donald’s recruitment never became the kind of sideshow it could’ve been. Listed at 6 feet and 260 pounds in high school, Donald was undersized and therefore viewed as a bit of a gamble up front. He also shut down his recruitment in April of his junior year in 2009, committing to Pitt long before signing in February 2010.
“It’s hard to go in and sell to your head coach, ‘I got a 6-foot defensive lineman that I love,’” said Greg Gattuso, who recruited Donald to Pitt as an assistant and is now the head coach at Albany. “The thing that happens for a guy like Aaron was he just didn’t fit the physical dimensions that everybody has when they’re recruiting. … You can’t recruit a bunch of 6-foot or 5-foot-11 defensive linemen at that level. You just can’t.”
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Penn State signed seven of the top 10 players in the state during that cycle but did not offer a scholarship to Donald. Gattuso, who was a defensive lineman on Penn State’s 1982 national championship team, will always have that little recruiting feather in his cap over his alma mater. In that class, Penn State did sign defensive tackle DaQuan Jones, who was drafted by the Titans in the fourth round of the 2014 NFL Draft and remains in the league with the Panthers.
Notre Dame, which was more often than not vying for top players in Western Pennsylvania, did not offer Donald, either.
According to Rivals, Donald’s offer sheet included the likes of Pitt, Rutgers, Akron and Toledo, where Aaron’s brother, Archie, played. It might’ve been nearly impossible anyway to pry Donald away from the hometown Panthers, whose campus is less than 30 minutes away from Penn Hills, but Gibson was unsure how many other teams would even try.
“People are always shocked by it, but that was one of the early conversations I had with Aaron,” said Gibson. “A lot of coaches are looking for 6-3, 6-4, 280 prototype guys, and I told him he was better than all of these people, but what he had to do was be a master technician. We really honed in on the actual technique aspect.”
Gibson would stand on the sideline and give Donald signals like a third-base coach. Until he could do it himself, they’d work through what to look for before the snap, how to set up opponents and what moves to use and when. There were seniors who couldn’t block the sophomore version of Donald. Package the technique with the nastiness that’s long been part of Donald’s game — he’s a “controlled Hulk,” as Gibson likes to say — and eventually someone was going to notice the rising star defensive tackle.
“I’m like, ‘This guy’s a gem, but I think people don’t know, because he’s under a rock,’” Gibson said. “Fortunately for Pitt, you know, they actually put the time in to kind of see some of the things that I was saying.”
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Gattuso went to a game during Donald’s junior season, but he was there to recruit someone else. Interested in Penn Hills senior inside linebacker Dan Mason, Gattuso stood on the sideline and was infatuated by Donald. He knew of him thanks to people like Gibson, who told Pitt’s coaches they needed to peek through the bushes and come to see this talented player in their backyard.
The man whose No. 59 jersey still rests in a glass case inside Penn Hills High School was wrecking every play. He bear-hugged quarterbacks and was making the same kinds of game-changing plays that have defined his NFL career.
By the end of the game, the words flew out of Gattuso’s mouth.
“I literally yelled out an offer to him on the field and had to explain it to my head coaches that night,” Gattuso said.
He did get the verbal scholarship offer approved by head coach Dave Wannstedt within two days. After turning on the tape, Wannstedt was sold.
“I just was in love with him from that moment,” Gattuso said. “I couldn’t take my eyes off him. … He was making a travesty of their offensive line.”
Gattuso believed Donald was a perfect fit for what Pitt was trying to build. He was already more physically developed than most high school players thanks to the strength training regimen Donald’s dad started him on at an early age. During an in-home visit, tales of a young Donald slowly warming up to weight training had the Pitt coaching staff in stitches.
“All these great football players, there’s all kinds of different stories in their background, but the one thing about the Donalds I always can remember the most was just that they were a nice family,” Gattuso said. “They were fun to be around.”
Donald went on to shatter records at Pitt and forever leave an impression on the program, recording a staggering 66 tackles for loss in his career, including 28 1/2 as a senior in 2013. In 2019, Donald made a seven-figure financial commitment to Pitt’s Football Championship Fund. He became the youngest seven-figure donor in the university’s history.
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Though Wannstedt and his staff were not retained after Donald’s freshman season, there’s still pride in knowing they played a role in helping to identify and develop an NFL star. Donald hasn’t forgotten them, either.
In May 2020, Gattuso asked Donald if he could spare 20 minutes to FaceTime with his team at Albany. The next thing he knew, Donald was standing up and demonstrating techniques, and he spent more than an hour with the wide-eyed players. Gattuso was thrilled but not at all surprised.
Gibson still texts Donald multiple times per week. Many people within Donald’s orbit in Penn Hills are appreciative of being a part of Donald’s rise to superstardom. When Gibson texted his protégé last Sunday, he told him that within a week he could be hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.
Come Sunday night, Gibson knows he’ll have the surround sound maxed out watching the person who means so much to him.
“He has never forgotten anyone who has poured a little bit into his life,” Gibson said. “I look forward to those times when we get a chance to speak during the week, and he’s never too busy to talk to his old coach or to send a text back. … He has always been that guy with me.”
(Photo: David Dermer / Diamond Images / Getty Images)
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