ATLANTA — The Rams selected defensive tackle Aaron Donald with their second first-round pick in 2014, No. 13 over all, which means that 11 other teams, after assembling draft boards and consulting scouts and analyzing a trilogy’s worth of film of his demolishing offensive linemen, decided against taking a player whose dominance has since redefined his position.

“I think,” said Mike Waufle, the Rams’ defensive line coach at the time, “people were scared of his size.”

Donald is 6-foot-1 and, coming out of the University of Pittsburgh, was listed at 285 pounds. That is enormous in human terms, but smallish for a defensive tackle, whose function in a 3-4 defense is to blot out the sun.

Not everyone with the Rams coveted Donald, but Waufle was undeterred. He had long prized speed over size, and from the start, he viewed Donald as an outlier, grading him as the best prospect he had seen since 1998, his first season coaching in the N.F.L. Donald generated so much power that he reminded Waufle of the Russian boxer Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV,” who punched a computerized meter with such force that Drago’s manager remarked, “Whatever he hits, he destroys.”