By Yeshayah Allis
Ok, hear me out. Yes, Myles Garrett is likely the best player in the NFL. Yes, he just posted a record number of sacks last season. Yes, he’s been the best defensive player since Aaron Donald retired and is a sure-fire Hall of Famer. But, this trade is nonsensical.
It’s been a month since the news broke that Myles Garrett was traded from the Browns to the Rams in exchange for Jared Verse, a 2027 first rounder, a 2028 second rounder, and a conditional 2029 third rounder, and the immediate reaction seems to remain that this makes the already Super Bowl favorite Rams even bigger favorites. The consensus has been largely positive for the Rams and largely negative for the Browns.
From the Rams point of view, they receive the best player in football, and they improve on their already dominant defense by bringing in the two-time Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY). Yes, they had to trade away a young star and future picks, but the Rams are known for trading away first rounders anyway. They were able to completely remake their team in 2022 and 2023 with mid-round draft picks, so how could this make them worse?
Well, the Rams essentially upgraded Jared Verse to Myles Garrett. How much better is Garrett than Verse? According to the Rams, he’s worth a first, second, and third round pick more. Those three picks, alone, could be used to bring in another veteran All-Pro pass rusher without sacrificing Verse. Guys like Maxx Crosby or possibly T.J. Watt were available for that price. So which would the Rams prefer, Myles Garrett or Jared Verse and Maxx Crosby? They chose Myles Garrett.
This entire trade hinges on how good Jared Verse and Myles Garrett will be in 2026. I may be biased in Jared Verse’s favor due to his age, seeing him as a draft prospect, and the production he’s already shown in his two short years in the NFL, but I’m willing to argue that even if Myles Garrett is better than Jared Verse in 2026, he’s not better than both Verse and Crosby combined.
I’ll go one step further. I think Myles Garrett has peaked. Obviously, it would be hard to duplicate a 23.0 sack season, but we’ve seen generational defensive lineman age before, and typically, 30 years old marks the beginning of the decline in a player’s career.
Above is All-Pro data since 2000, and it shows the number of All-Pros at the defensive end position for each age season. After age 30, we see a significant drop off in the number of All-Pro seasons. Myles Garrett is on a 5 year deal, which will take him through his age 34 season. Therefore, we can expect his performance to decline over the next 5 years, and his best season is likely to be this year.
On the other side of the trade, Jared Verse is 25, so he’s at the beginning of his 6 year peak. If we examine this trade from the Brown’s perspective, we see that their roster has been completely reconstructed over the past two years by rookies. In 2025, they drafted Mason Graham, Carson Schwesinger, the Defensive Rookie of the Year (DROY), and Quinshon Judkins: three guys that can turn into marquee franchise players. Then, in 2026, they drafted Spencer Fano, KC Concepcion, Denzel Boston, and Emmanuel McNeil-Warren: four of the highest rated prospects in this draft. Myles Garrett doesn’t fit in with this team; Jared Verse does. A roster full of great, young, cheap players allows the Browns to work through that Deshaun Watson cap space hell they created while having legitimate hope for the future.
In the end, it’s clear that the Rams wanted Myles Garrett, specifically, to get another Aaron Donald-esque sack to win the Super Bowl, and we’ll see if I’m completely wrong about this trade over the next two seasons or if I and the Browns are correct in our assessment of Myles Garrett: an overpriced superstar who’s at the end of his peak performance.
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