Jared Verse had one final Rams request after being traded to Browns

Sean McVay wanted Jared Verse to hear it from him.

As noise emerged online Monday morning about the potential of a Myles Garrett trade, the Rams head coach wanted to make sure he was the one to first inform Verse that he was being dealt to Cleveland.

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So at 9:45 a.m. PT Monday, per Sports Illustrated, McVay summoned Verse to his office to meet with him and GM Les Snead to break the news to him.

Verse, in turn, had a similar desire for how his now ex-teammates would find out. With a team meeting looming at 10 a.m., Verse asked if he could share the news.

“Hell, yeah, you can,” McVay replied.

It was the final signature moment for a player who is just one of three Rams first-round picks since they returned to Los Angeles in 2016, the others being quarterbacks Jared Goff and Ty Simpson.

Verse told reporters at Browns OTAs on Wednesday that the trade “caught me by surprise” and that it was “upsetting.”

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Before the Garrett acquisition, Verse, 25, looked like the future of the Rams’ defensive line, a needed destructive force after Aaron Donald retired following the 2023 season.

Through his first two years in the NFL, Verse has turned into one of the more promising young players, after tallying 7.5 sacks for a Rams team that lost in the NFC Championship game to the Seattle Seahawks.

He’s quickly blossomed into one of the better edge rushers in the league, after generating 25 pressures through his first two seasons.

The future of the Rams was projected to have Verse lined up alongside Byron Young, Kobie Turner and his former Florida State teammate Braden Fiske.

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The four of them accounted for 29.5 of the Rams’ 47 sacks last season, giving the team a glimpse into what their defensive line will look like for years to come.

But according to Sports Illustrated, the Rams front office shifted course when Snead noticed the Browns moved the trigger date on Garrett’s $29.2 million option bonus from March to September.

From then on, Snead began negotiations with Browns general manager Andrew Berry for the last two and a half months.

The two sides came to an agreement shortly after Garrett came home from vacationing with his girlfriend Chloe Kim, in Japan and Korea during Memorial Day weekend.

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The article said that originally, the two sides were going to make the deal official the weekend before the deal actually happened, but McVay wanted to tell Verse personally that he was being traded.

Snead said that Verse handled the news in a way that “a dad would want his son to do it.”