ALLEN PARK -- On the rampage he’s currently running through the NFL, Aaron Donald has a way of humbling players by taking the level they thought they were at and smashing it down a peg. He’s done this consistently on the way to 16.5 sacks and 20 tackles for loss to earn MVP murmurs.

Frank Ragnow was his victim two weeks ago, and in the moment, it came off as his “Welcome to the NFL” experience. The first-round left guard allowed six pressures, three hurries, two quarterback hits and a sack as the Rams overpowered the Lions for a 30-16 victory at Ford Field.

It would be an understandable low point for a rookie going up against the best defender in the NFL in such a will-exerting part of the field, if it were indeed a low point. Pro Football Focus thought so, grading him a 2.0, an almost impossibly low bar.

But Ragnow’s position coach wasn’t so definitive.

“I think the response would be that every week we treat as a new week, that we have to learn from mistakes, not allow them to affect our future performance. So anything that went well or poorly in a previous week we try to put behind us, learn what we need to learn from that and pick something that we need to improve upon," Jeff Davidson said. "(Frank) has done a very good job of that each week.”

It was a big-picture answer that said little about Ragnow or Donald, so he was brought back to the starting point: How can Ragnow learn from getting pushed around by Donald?

“We have to study our personnel that we’re playing against," Davidson said. "Every player presents new challenges. Part of that falls on coaching in the way that we coach the technique associated specifically with those guys. Some of it is, we’ll call it, the way that five guys function to be able to get to where we don’t always have one-on-ones. That’s something that each week we get better at that I need to get better at. That’s something I need to do a better job of.”

Again, no mention of Donald and no mention of Ragnow this time either. It could well be a coach protecting his player from criticism at all costs, even if the performance was cut and dry for all to see, and even if it’s in many ways what should happen to a rookie going up against an All-Pro.

Patricia took the approach a step further.

“I think every day that anybody plays against Aaron Donald, I don’t think anybody’s walking out of that the next day right now going, ‘Yeah, I really got the better of that situation,'" the Lions coach said.

In a 288-word answer, he did not mention Ragnow once.

What ultimately matters, though, is what Ragnow took away from the experience. He’s the Lions' first-round pick and one of the central building blocks for a 5-8 team that has holes just about everywhere else on the roster. Confidence can fluctuate heavily in the NFL, and it can be stripped away by one rough performance for everyone to see.

Ragnow seemed to bounce back well in the next game, as he went on the road to Arizona and helped put a 17-3 win away with a 75-yard drive in which Zach Zenner ran up behind him for the score. But that was also against the 29th-ranked run defense in the NFL.

It turned out Ragnow was more than willing to talk about the game against Donald in the locker room Wednesday.

“It was good that I got to see him my rookie year. I got to see what the bar is, where the competition is. I’ll be able to learn from a lot of mistakes on film,” Ragnow said.

And that’s been life for him as a rookie starter so far.

“There are some times when you’re like, ‘Wow.’ There’s some times when you’re like, ‘All right, I’m pretty good still,'" Ragnow said. "It’s been an up-and-down kind of thing. I would always like to be better than I’ve been, but it is what it is.”