Cleveland Browns

Jared Verse practiced with the Browns for the first time on Wednesday and then met with the media to discuss the trade that brought him to Cleveland.

Verse came to the Browns along with a package of draft picks as part of the trade that sent Myles Garrett to the Rams. The 2024 first-round pick and defensive rookie of the year said that his initial response was not a positive one, but hearing how the Browns prioritized his addition has him feeling better about his change of circumstances.

“It caught me by surprise,” Verse said. “I love L.A. I love the coaches, the organization, my teammates, the staff, the fans. I love the whole vibe of L.A. It was upsetting. I was upset for a good little bit of time, but when you’re an athlete you understand the nature of business. Everybody does what they think is best for their business and that’s the situation that I’m in. I’m happy to be a part of the Browns. I’m happy that they believe in me and that they were able to make that trade and bring me here.”

Verse said that he’s not approaching the start of his Browns tenure with the mindset of replacing Myles Garrett. He said he is focused only on being “the best me” and believes that player will be the best player in the league.

If that’s how things play out, it will be hard for anyone in Cleveland to be upset about how things played out this week.

The Rams’ trade for pass rusher Myles Garrett included parting ways with pass rusher Jared Verse. It wasn’t easy for the Rams to do it.

“Sometimes we have to be able to make decisions that are best for the collective,” McVay told reporters on Tuesday. “This is what we thought was best for our team. Even though it affected somebody that’s been a significant part in a negative way that we do love. But really it was a football decision and that’s what guides our overall approach and our compass, if you will.”

McVay said he spoke with Verse before the trade happened.

“We talked to him about the appreciation, the gratitude,” McVay said. “I think when you have to have those hard conversations, you just let him know. ‘We just executed a trade where we’re acquiring Myles Garrett and you’re going to Cleveland. I know it doesn’t feel great right now, but there’s a lot of love. There’s a lot of appreciation and gratitude for our relationship, the two years and the impact that you’ve made. I can’t wait to watch you go shine in Cleveland.’

“But I will say this, what a stud with the way that he handled it. I don’t want to say that I was surprised, but I was so impressed. When [my sons] eventually go through a challenging conversation, I hope they handle it the way that Jared Verse did. I’m a big fan of his. I know you guys know that. I’ll wish him the best and watch him do his thing but we are really excited, with respect to Jared, about being able to get this guy. It’s a big deal for us.”

The transaction underscores the reality that teams will always do what’s best for them. Players, when they have the ability to do so, should always do the same.

Verse didn’t really have any options. He was drafted by the Rams, and no rookie contract includes a no-trade clause. If the team decides to make a deal, the player has to follow his contract, with the only option being retirement.

If Verse continues to be a Pro Bowl talent, he’ll eventually have the kind of power that Garrett now enjoys. For now, Verse (like the vast majority of players) is a piece in a machine that can be removed at any time, with or without notice — and regardless of whether he wanted that outcome.

When Myles Garrett made his case to be traded out of Cleveland in February 2025, the Browns responded by throwing money at the problem.

The end result was a new contract that made Garrett, at the time, the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL at $40 million per year in new-money average.

The market has since spiked by 25 percent, starting with Packers linebacker Micah Parsons and continuing most recently with Texans linebacker Will Anderson Jr., whose deal pushed the bar to $50 million per year.

Rams G.M. Les Snead touched briefly on the issue of Garrett’s deal during his introductory press conference on Tuesday.

“I will say this for [agent] Nicole [Lynn],” Snead said. “We wouldn’t have been able to get this done without us working pretty tirelessly since the weekend. We didn’t have a lot of time to discuss contract, but thank you, Nicole.”

They have the time to talk about it now. Will the Rams, who gave up three draft picks and Jared Verse to get Garrett, give him a sweetener? If they value him the way they clearly do, that value needs to reflect itself in his compensation package.

So, yes, that’s the next topic to address. Will the Rams give Garrett a new deal now? Will they kick the can for a year and pay him $30.5 million for 2026?

The market is the market. Last year, Garrett reset the market. The market has since been reset, multiple times. And while Garrett (whose career earnings through 2025 passed $150 million) has finally gotten his chance to play for a winner, there are plenty of reasons for Garrett to attempt to get full and fair value while he can.

That said, Garrett could have insisted on a new deal on his way through the door. He could have hinged waiving his no-trade clause on a contract that moved his new-money APY to $50.1 million, or more.

Now that the deal is done, it becomes a little trickier for Garrett to get the Rams to tear up the existing deal. Garrett is happy to be with a contender. Taking a stand for an adjustment could disrupt that vibe, and sacrifice some of his fresh SoCal goodwill.

Still, Garrett’s contract can’t be ignored. He’s 30. He’s signed for five more years. He likely has one more bite at the apple. The sooner he takes it, the more likely he’ll become once again the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league.

The Browns added a little extra protection for themselves to complete the Myles Garrett trade to the Rams this week.

While Cleveland received edge rusher Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick, and a 2029 third-round pick from Los Angeles in exchange for Garrett, the league’s daily transaction wire noted that the final pick was conditional.

According to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, the condition on that 2029 third-round pick is that it will become a first-round pick in the event that the Rams trade Garrett to a team in the AFC North.

It doesn’t seem likely that the Rams would even want to trade Garrett at any point in the future.

But just in case they do, the Browns have at least made it unlikely that they’ll ever see Garrett twice a year on the opposing sideline.

In late February, the Browns proposed extending the window for trading future draft picks from three years to five. In March, the Rams made it clear that they supported the proposal.

Although the Browns ultimately withdrew the proposal (which means they knew it wouldn’t get 24 “yes” votes), the recent trade of Myles Garrett from the Browns to the Rams adds more context to the effort.

It’s clear that the trade was months in the making. The deal, as done, takes full advantage of the current three-year limit (the picks come from 2027, 2028, and 2029). If the Browns’ proposal had been adopted, would the Rams have added more picks beyond 2029? Could it have allowed the Rams to keep two-time Pro Bowler Jared Verse?

Regardless of what would have happened if the five-year proposal had been adopted, the Garrett trade further explains why both teams wanted to do it. It’s entirely possible that, on Monday, the Browns’ proposal would have been utilized by both teams, in connection with the Garrett trade.

Rams General Manager Les Snead says the Myles Garrett trade was months in the making.

Snead said at Garrett’s introductory press conference in Los Angeles that he and head coach Sean McVay started talking about making big moves to improve the defense as soon as the offseason started.

“How did we end up with Myles Garrett sitting between Sean and myself? When Sean and I met for the first time to talk about the offseason, we did discuss how we could add to the defense,” Snead said.

Adding to the defense is one thing. Adding the NFL’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year is something else, something that Snead first thought would be possible in March, when Garrett and the Browns modified Garrett’s contract in a way that made him easier to trade. Snead says he called Browns General Manager Andrew Berry as soon as that happened to get a sense for whether the Browns were signaling with that contract change Garrett would be available in a trade.

“When Cleveland made the adjustment to his contract, not sure if it was a signal, they made an adjustment,” Snead said. “I’ve got a good relationship with Andrew Berry, thought I’d just check in. Let’s check in. Myles, he’s a Cleveland Brown, he’s on their Mount Rushmore, so they were a no. But Andrew and I have a good relationship, we like talking about football a good bit, so I would pester him a little bit, probably jokingly at first, then we began talking a little more seriously.”

Snead said Berry turned down his offers of a package of draft picks for Garrett, but the Browns were willing to consider it if the Rams would trade Jared Verse, a talented young pass rusher.

“We tried to do this with draft compensation, then the draft came and went,” Snead said. “We picked talks back up, we tried to discuss more draft compensation. At the end of the day, and where it got a little tough for us, is they asked for Jared Verse in return. And similar to Cleveland at first, we were a no, based on all that Jared’s done for our organization. During May, we kept trying, we tried to figure out a solution, but as the June 1 date came, as it was getting closer, probably some time late May, we had a decision to make. We knew where Cleveland stood, they knew where we stood, and we proceeded to make the trade.”

Snead said he was also aware of Garrett’s no-trade clause, which would have allowed him to refuse the trade.

“Myles had a no-trade clause,” Snead said. “I remember asking Andrew after about a month of talking, ‘Myles has a no-trade clause, are we going to have gone through all this and he’s going to say no?’”

Garrett didn’t say no, and Snead finally made his long-awaited trade.

After the Browns hired Todd Monken to be the team’s new head coach, incumbent defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz decided to move on.

In an appearance with Ryan Ripken, Schwartz addressed his decision to resign from the team after he didn’t get the head-coaching job following the firing of Kevin Stefanski.

“We had a lot of success on defense, and the Browns made a change at head coach, and they passed over me, with all the success that we had and the ability to develop players, our best players had their best years, all those different things,” Schwartz said. “And that was the decision they made. They wanted to go with an offensive guy. They chose Todd. I’m fine with that.

“They can make, you know, decisions that they want to make. But they can’t expect me to stay on board for that. Anybody that’s in any business, you get passed over for a promotion, when you’ve done a really, really good job in your job, and you think you were in line for that promotion, it’s time to go.

“And Todd deserved his own guy. A forced marriage isn’t gonna work in the NFL. And, you know, like having command of the players and having command in a locker room, all those things are extremely important, and I didn’t feel like I could do my job after getting passed over for that coaching job. It sort of, you know, just put me in a tough position. ‘Hey, we want you to listen to this guy, but we didn’t think — we didn’t want to make him that coach.’

“So I made the decision to resign, and I have to sit out this year as a result, but I think anybody that’s been in any business when you’ve done a good job when you mentioned those numbers — we weren’t one of the best defenses in three years. We were the best defense in three years. And the decision they made, that’s their decision.

“But to expect me to stay and to be on board for that, that’s just a tough situation. And it wouldn’t have been good for me, and it wouldn’t have been good for Todd. So it was best for him to get his own guy in there, and to move forward with him, as opposed to just having an arranged marriage, and having me there, and maybe having some players more loyal to me than him. It can just be a bad situation. Thirty-three years in the NFL, I’ve never been around that before. So, you know, that all went into decision.

“I wasn’t upset about it. I was disappointed about it. I wasn’t upset about it. I wasn’t mad about it, but it’s just, you know my experience told me that wasn’t gonna be a situation that was gonna work.”

The most obvious question is whether defensive end Myles Garrett would have wanted to stay with the Browns, if Schwartz had become the head coach. Regardless, it’s better for the Browns to have gotten significant value for the 30-year-old Garrett. With each passing year, that would have been harder to do.

On Monday morning, before the Browns traded defensive end Myles Garrett to the Rams, Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer flagged the Rams, Cowboys, and Eagles as potential destinations.

Multiple reports have indicated that the Browns wanted defensive tackle Jalen Carter from the Eagles, but that the Eagles weren’t interested in that.

Via Jeff Kerr of SI.com, the Eagles offered Nolan Smith or Jalyx Hunt instead.

The Eagles’ insistence on keeping Carter is a bit confusing, given that the forward-looking Eagles have yet to sign Carter to a second contract. In March, after the Eagles signed defensive tackle Jordan Davis to a new deal, it was leaked that they have gotten calls about Carter, which often is part of a strategy aimed at getting more.

The challenge for the Eagles as to Carter is his fifth-year option salary of $27.1 million in 2027. Given that number, he may be looking for a market-level deal well in excess of $30 million in new-money average.

For 2026, Carter is due to make only $3.723 million in the fourth year of his first-round rookie deal. He shouldn’t set foot on a practice field until he gets his second deal. The team’s refusal to include him in a trade package for Garrett should only strengthen Carter’s resolve in that regard.

Myles Garrett learned a week ago that a trade to the Rams was a possibility. The reigning Defensive Player of the Year held his breath until it came to fruition on Monday.

“I was surprised,” Garrett said, via video from the team. “It was a bit of excitement, being in L.A., a lot of roots here, and knowing there’s a winning culture and some great teammates and great coaches here. You know I was definitely looking forward to the opportunity, God willing.”

In Garrett’s nine seasons in Cleveland, the Browns went 58-90-1 with two playoff appearances and one playoff win. The Rams have 10 playoff wins in that time with two Super Bowl appearances and a Super Bowl title.

“Since the very beginning, it’s always been about winning,” Garrett said. “It just breaks down to the timing of everything. What does it realistically look like to be a winner now? To have an opportunity to do that immediately, that was an opportunity that was just too difficult to pass up. I’ll always have love in my heart for Cleveland, the city, the community, all the players and everything else, but the opportunity to come here to have an immediate and profound impact on this team, it was something I just had to move forward with.”

Garrett, 30, has double-digit sacks every season except his rookie season of 2017. He has 125.5 career sacks, including an NFL single-season record of 23.

In the immediate aftermath of the blockbuster trade that sent Myles Garrett from the Browns to the Rams, there was reporting that Cleveland was a “hard no” on potentially moving another top veteran defender, cornerback Denzel Ward.

Back when Garrett requested a trade in February 2025, Ward admitted that the request had “a huge impact” on him.

It stands to reason with that with Garrett no longer on the team and with a new coaching staff, Ward might not be entirely happy with the current state of the organization.

But General Manager Andrew Berry said on Tuesday that Ward’s status with the franchise has not changed, making it sound like the franchise has no intention to shop him.

“So, I’d say No. 1, I think it’s probably most appropriate for Denzel to speak for himself,” Berry said in his press conference. “No. 2, Denzel’s been great throughout the offseason. His communication’s been good. He’s a big part of the team, and we like him a lot.

“He’s still playing at a really high level. That doesn’t change with this transaction.”

Berry added that even with the myriad changes that have gone on in the organization since the end of the 2025 season, he’s anticipating veterans like Ward will be fine with the club going forward.

“[C]hange is commonplace in the NFL and roster turnover is commonplace in the NFL,” Berry said. “You know, we have good communication with all of our players. You know, obviously for a move of this magnitude, we communicate directly with them. So, they hear it from us and they understand everything that’s involved.

“But we have a good group of guys in that locker room, and we’re really excited about the core.”

Berry and the Browns may not actively be shopping Ward. But as the Garrett deal made clear, the Browns will pick up the phone and listen if the offer is good enough.