Rams bet on Jared Verse-Braden Fiske chemistry on defensive front

HERMOSA BEACH — When he landed about 20 hours after being selected by the Rams in the first round of the NFL draft, Jared Verse was told he would have at least half an hour to change and decompress before heading to the team’s draft headquarters.

But when they arrived at the hotel on Friday, Verse’s escort told him he had two minutes before they had to leave. He questioned the sudden change of plan, and was told his new coaches wanted to speak to him before they made their second-round pick.

Verse bought that explanation, but was still wary of the sudden haste with which they were moving. When he arrived at the swanky beach house where the Rams were stationed, he was ushered upstairs, skipping steps along the way.

“I’m like, what’s happening?”

The Rams didn’t want him to miss this moment. On the phone was the team’s second-round pick, Verse’s Florida State teammate, defensive tackle Braden Fiske.

“I’m like, ‘Hey Fiske.’ ‘What’s up Jared?’ ‘Fiske that’s you?’” Verse recalled, his voice reaching a disbelieving falsetto. “We just kept talking, you could hear how much it meant to him, that moment.”

“One of the cooler draft moments of my however-many-year career,” general manager Les Snead said.

The Rams selected Fiske with the 39th overall pick of the NFL draft, and the seventh selection of the second round. They traded a fifth-round pick on Saturday and their second-round pick in 2025 to the Carolina Panthers to move up from No. 52 to complete their set of Seminole pass rushers that will step in to help fill the void created by Aaron Donald’s retirement last month.

Verse and Fiske had discussed this possibility, as recently as Thursday. Not with the Rams, necessarily, but about how special it would be to continue to build upon the bond they forged in their one season together in Tallahassee.

“I just cannot believe that happened,” Fiske said over Zoom, a Rams hat already snugly on his head.

Like Verse, Fiske did not start his career with the blue-blood Seminoles. He spent his first five years of college at Western Michigan before spending his final season at Florida State, where he was named to the AP’s All-American third team following a six-sack campaign.

Verse, who got his start at FCS-level Albany, recognized quickly a similar work ethic in Fiske that soon became the foundation of their relationship.

“I’ve never in my life met somebody who works harder or just as hard as me until I met Fiske,” Verse said. “This guy’s in the training room, he’s in there an hour before me. I’m in the weight room, he comes in there five minutes later and I gotta extend my workout because I can’t let him be in there longer than me.”

“I wasn’t going to let someone outwork me,” Fiske echoed. “That’s something that made us gravitate towards each other.”

There might have been some competition, but they worked together, too, watching film together late into the evening for 1-2 hours per day, not to mention going to lunch together. As they spent more time studying offenses, their shorthand together became non-verbal.

“It got to that point in the season where you give that head nod and you just look at each other and we knew what was coming,” said Fiske, who did not talk to the Rams during the pre-draft process outside of a few texts with defensive line coach Giff Smith this week.

“Those two guys, one of the things that jumped off the tape was both of those guys in combination,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said. “The way they were able to influence and affect games, it was really cool.”

Snead said the Rams always wanted to move up in the second round to go get Fiske, so long as he lasted until Friday. When Verse fell to the Rams on Thursday, Snead said he felt lucky that the Rams would have the opportunity to pair the two teammates. So long as they were able to get the deal done for Fiske, a task Snead said they began working on Thursday night and into Friday morning.

The Rams still have other needs to address, and they began that with two picks in the third round, selecting Michigan running back Blake Corum to back up Kyren Williams and Miami safety Kamren Kinchens to reinforce the secondary.

But the most glaring assignment entering the draft was to shore up the defensive front, and they are betting a future second-rounder that pairing Fiske with Verse will go a long way toward replacing Donald by committee.

“Seeing a team trading up to get you, that means they really want you and they saw something in you from the beginning,” Fiske said. “I’m going to give in return everything I got when I get there.”