Myles Garrett — the best player the Cleveland Browns have had in thirty years, possibly ever — waived his no-trade clause and chose to leave, and according to ESPN the Los Angeles Rams gave Cleveland exactly what it needed to say yes.
The return: Jared Verse, a 2027 first, a 2028 second, a 2029 third. Verse is 25, won Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2024, made two Pro Bowls. It’s a genuinely good haul. I sat on my couch staring at it and could not make myself feel better about any of it.
https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/2061497979341595017
Here’s the thing about “the Browns were adamant about not trading Myles Garrett” — that sentence ends with them trading Myles Garrett. The Rams called and called. They included Verse and adjusted the picks. And when Cleveland’s hand was forced, they folded because what else do you do when the best player you have looks you in the eye and says he’d rather be somewhere else?
Garrett posted his goodbye on social media: “Loving you is easy, leaving you is the hard part.” That’s a man who genuinely cared about Cleveland. That’s also a man who decided caring about Cleveland wasn’t enough reason to stay.
He put up 23 sacks in 2025 — a new NFL single-season record, breaking the mark that Strahan and Watt had held for decades. He won AP Defensive Player of the Year unanimously, all 50 first-place votes. He made five All-Pro teams in Cleveland. He did everything a player can possibly do for a franchise and the franchise still managed to build nothing around him worth staying for.
I think about Baker Mayfield a lot. Cleveland ran him out of town in 2022, he went to Tampa, won a Super Bowl ring. I think about the Deshaun Watson disaster — $230 million guaranteed for a guy who barely played. The Browns have an absolutely stunning institutional gift for being the wrong place at the wrong time for everyone involved.
Now Garrett goes to Los Angeles, to a Rams team hosting Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium — their own house — as the first franchise since the 1970 merger to have both the reigning MVP and the reigning DPOY on the same roster. They already had everything. They added Myles Garrett on top of it. This is a legal form of cheating.
Jared Verse is legitimately good and the picks matter and Cleveland will be fine in a year or two or eight, depending on what they do with the quarterback situation (prayer hands). But “fine in a year or two” is not what you say about the greatest defensive player in the league walking out the door because the building he played in couldn’t hold him.
Browse everything Cleveland has given away in the last decade over at /category/nfl and tell me this doesn’t feel familiar.
The Browns had the best pass rusher alive. They had him for years. He gave them everything and left anyway. That’s the whole story. There’s no version of it that doesn’t sting.
