Andrew Berry told reporters after the trade that going to the Rams “wasn’t Plan A going into the offseason. Quite honestly, we would have operated differently if it was.” That’s a Browns GM confirming, on the record: his franchise’s greatest defensive player since Jim Brown got traded because the Rams called and the number was right. Not a vision. A phone call.
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The trade, confirmed Monday, sends Myles Garrett to Los Angeles for Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick, and a 2029 third-round pick. Garrett is 30 years old. He set the NFL’s single-season sack record with 23 in 2025, won his second Defensive Player of the Year award, and did it on a 5-12 team that finished last in the AFC North. He’s the first reigning DPOY to be traded the following offseason since 1997. He had a full no-trade clause and waived it.
That part isn’t getting enough attention. Garrett approved this deal. He looked at Cleveland’s QB situation — Deshaun Watson versus Shedeur Sanders entering 2026 — and decided he’d rather be somewhere else. You can’t entirely blame him. The Browns didn’t have to do anything. Garrett had signed a 4-year, $160 million extension in March 2025, the richest non-QB contract in NFL history at the time, specifically to end the trade request he filed the previous February. Fifteen months later, the Browns traded him anyway. They gave him the extension, convinced him to stay, and then took the call from Les Snead.
That’s not betrayal. That’s just the NFL. It’s also a very specific kind of cruelty.
The case for the trade isn’t hard to make. Verse is 25, two Pro Bowls in two seasons, the 2024 Defensive Rookie of the Year. Three draft picks across three years gives Cleveland ammunition in a draft class that could include a franchise quarterback. A franchise that went 58-90-1 over nine Garrett seasons has no business claiming continuity as a value. The rebuild logic is coherent.
The problem is that Browns fans have been handed coherent rebuild logic approximately six times in the last decade, and each time the picks became the point rather than the means. The organization has gotten so good at accumulating assets that it has started to mistake asset accumulation for a football strategy. Picks are not a team. Verse is good; Verse is not Myles Garrett at 30 coming off the best individual defensive season in NFL history. There is no version of this trade where Cleveland comes out ahead. The Rams just added Garrett to a roster that already had Matthew Stafford on a $55 million per year extension. Their Super Bowl odds jumped to +650 after the trade, making them the NFC favorites at +320 to reach the game. What the Rams are building on defense is becoming something worth watching from a very uncomfortable distance if you’re a Browns fan.
Garrett’s farewell to Cleveland was: “Loving you is easy, leaving you is the hard part.” I’ve been a Cardinals fan long enough to recognize what a franchise’s best player sounds like when he’s being gracious about something that wasn’t his call. It’s the kind of thing you say when the ending is complicated.
The Browns will tell you this was the right call. Berry’s quote confirms it was a reactive call. Both things can be true.
Cleveland traded its greatest defensive player voluntarily, with full leverage, and got a good young pass rusher and three picks for a team that hasn’t decided who its quarterback is. The math might work out. It has to work out. There is no other acceptable outcome after this.
