Myles Garrett is a Ram now, and every offensive coordinator in the NFC West has spent the last six weeks quietly revising their protection schemes.
The trade came down June 1-2: Garrett to Los Angeles for Jared Verse, a 2027 first-rounder, a 2028 second, and a 2029 third. Verse goes to Cleveland Browns. The Rams get the best defensive player on earth. General manager Les Snead looked at his team’s cost and decided the price was reasonable.
Here is what Garrett did in 2025: 23 sacks — a new NFL single-season record, clearing Michael Strahan’s 22.5 — 33 tackles for loss, 84 pressures, and a double-team rate north of 40%. Unanimous AP Defensive Player of the Year. The second time he’s won it. He is 30 years old.
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The Rams are pairing him with Byron Young, a fourth-year edge rusher coming off a breakout 2025, on the outside. Behind them sits an interior that already had Braden Fiske posting a 12.3% pressure rate and Kobie Turner generating 7 sacks and a 12.4% pressure rate. They added Trent McDuffie from Kansas City to shore up corner. Kam Curl and Kamren Kinchens are in the secondary. This is a defense being assembled with a specific destination in mind — the Rams are hosting Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium, and they decided that if you’re going to play the host city angle, you might as well give the crowd something to watch.
The NFC West reactions were instructive. Cardinals tight end Trey McBride acknowledged the obvious: “Teams always need to think about doubling and chipping Garrett because of how destructive he can be.” Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald offered the diplomatically understated version: “Myles Garrett’s been doing it at a high level for a long time.” Trent Williams — who is one of the best offensive tackles in football and has been for most of this decade — saw the news and reacted. You can imagine what a reaction from Trent Williams to a Myles Garrett trade looks like.
I watched Garrett’s 2025 film for about an hour after this trade broke and the thing that keeps coming back to me is how clean the first step is. It doesn’t look like it should produce 23 sacks. It looks like a man who has simply memorized something the offensive tackle hasn’t figured out yet.
Seth Walder at ESPN gave the deal a C-minus — not wrong on the cost to the 2027-through-2030 Rams, but also the kind of grade you give a move before you’ve watched what 23 sacks does to a division. Jeremy Fowler called it one of the best moves of the 2026 offseason. Dan Graziano went further: “Garrett going to the Rams and becoming visible on prime time is tremendous validation of a Hall of Fame-caliber career.” Field Yates has been making the case that Garrett should be considered the best player in football, period, QB bias be damned.
The contract confirms what the Rams think they have: $35.7 million signing bonus, $1.3 million salary in year one, roughly $37 million total in 2026. He waived his no-trade clause. He wanted this.
The Cardinals, the 49ers, and the Seahawks each face Garrett twice a year now. The division just got harder to play offense in, and it was already not easy.
The NFC West didn’t have a Myles Garrett problem before. It does now.
