Jared Verse admits he was initially unhappy after being traded from the Rams to the Browns
Jared Verse's family is from Dayton, Ohio, and his older sister still lives there and will be relatively close by, so the trade that sent Verse to the Cleveland Browns comes with benefits. But let's not kid ourselves, going from the Los Angeles Rams to the Browns wasn't welcomed news for Verse.
"I was upset for a good little bit of time," Verse revealed when he met with local reporters at the Browns' facility on Wednesday.
Understandable.
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That's because going from the Rams, a Super Bowl contender, to the Browns, a team contending to finish last in the AFC North, is not going to immediately feel awesome. It's the proverbial trip from the penthouse to the outhouse.
"Yeah, it caught me by surprise," Verse continued. "I loved L.A. I loved the coaches, the organization, my teammates, everybody a part of it, the staff, the fans. You know, I loved the whole vibe of LA, Los Angeles, the Rams, and it was upsetting."
This is a player who shows no weakness on the field being vulnerable in front of strangers.
And there really should be no judgment here because we get it. We've seen it before.
Jared Goff helped the Rams get to a Super Bowl in February of 2019. So he thought he was building a life with that team. But two years later, he was traded to the Detroit Lions for older, more accomplished Matthew Stafford.
It's a blow to the ego.
And like the Goff-Stafford deal, we're talking about going from Gucci leather belts to the Rust Belt. Because Cleveland is a nice town and all, but the weather doesn't compare with Los Angeles. And the vibe for a 25-year-old with a lot of money obviously isn't the same, either.
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Then there are the prospects for the coming season. Verse was mentally prepared to run it back with a good team until this trade. The Rams had a 12-5 record last season and reached the NFC Championship game. The Browns were 5-12 and reached for a coaching change.
But a duty, one supposes, of being a professional athlete is understanding that your team is your workplace. It's your business, not your family.
Many teams tell players they're in a family but when was the last time a family traded a son or brother?
Verse gets that now.
"When you’re an athlete, you understand the nature of the business," he said. "Everybody does what they think is best for their business, and that’s the situation that I’m in. I’m happy to be a part of the Browns. I’m happy that they believed in me and they were able to make that trade and bring me here, be with my teammates, be with everybody here.
"And I truly do believe in everybody in the locker room. But it was upsetting at first. But then you got two choices: You can either work or you can give up, and I ain’t never been a quitter."
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An intriguing aspect of the Browns trading Myles Garrett for Verse, a first-round pick in 2027, a second-round pick in 2028 and a third-round pick in 2029 is that they held fast until the Rams added Verse to the deal. Until that point, the deal was a draft compensation exchange for Garrett that Cleveland wasn't necessarily wanting to make.
"I always told myself that if we were ever in a position where were going to trade Myles, three things would have to be true," Browns Executive Vice President and General Manager Andrew Berry said. "Number one, it would have to have short and long term benefits. Number two, as part of the trade, a young cost-control star at a premium position would have to be included. The third piece is that there would have to be premium draft capital.
"And there’s a very small set of deals that really satisfy those constraints. So, when it got to the point with our negotiations with the Rams, when all those things were satisfied, it really caused us to take a step back and really think about the decision.
"Jared Verse, he’s obviously a huge part of this return for us."
This is good for Verse. He's on a team that wants him and is more closely aligned with his career arc. He's on his rookie contract through the 2027 season. And he's on a team that is building for a brighter future in perhaps two or three years.
The Rams are in win-now mode. They're stacking their roster with high-priced veterans and two or three years from now might be in rebuilding mode.
So maybe the move Verse didn't initially like could work in his better interest.