The Los Angeles Rams traded Jared Verse simply because Myles Garrett became available.

That sentence is probably the clearest explanation of this entire organization. Verse wasn’t some disappointment they needed to escape. He was 25 years old, two seasons removed from winning Defensive Rookie of the Year, and already a two-time Pro Bowler. He was the kind of player a normal front office spends years trying to find, then another five years building around. The Rams found him, developed him and watched him become exactly what they hoped he would be. Then they put him in a package with a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second, and a 2029 third because Garrett was even better.

It was ruthless. It was expensive. It was completely on brand. It also may have turned the Rams into the most complete team in football.

Garrett is coming off a 23-sack season — an NFL record — and his second Defensive Player of the Year award. Matthew Stafford is coming off the first MVP season of his career after leading the league with 4,707 passing yards and 46 touchdowns. For the first time in NFL history, the reigning MVP and Defensive Player of the Year are teammates. They’re surrounded by Puka Nacua, Davante Adams, Kyren Williams, Byron Young, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske, Trent McDuffie, and Jaylen Watson.

As if that wasn't enough, Super Bowl LXI will be played at SoFi Stadium in February.

Continuity At The Top

Of course the Rams did this. The easy way to explain Los Angeles is to dust off the old “F them picks” line, chuckle at whatever Les Snead has scribbled on his draft board, and call it All-In 2.0. And yeah, that’s part of the story. The Rams have treated first-round picks less like precious heirlooms and more like chips at a poker table for most of the last decade, and they’ve been more than happy to flip a mystery 22-year-old for a proven star.

But that still doesn’t quite capture why the McVay-Snead thing is so interesting. The Rams don’t really stick to one plan. They’ve had a bunch of them, and McVay seems to get bored with each one the second it starts to feel like a routine.

The first great Rams team was built the “normal” way: young quarterback, young running back, a homegrown defensive star, a killer draft class, and some steady vets to hold it all together. Then they pivoted into a roster full of big names. Then they ditched the young QB for an older one, kept shipping out picks, and rode that all the way to a Super Bowl.

When that group fell apart, they ate about $75 million in dead money, loaded up on 14 draft picks, and suddenly had one of the youngest teams in the league. McVay even tweaked the offense that made him famous. Snead finally held onto a couple of first-rounders, and it looked like, for once, they might settle into something a little more sustainable.

That lasted, what, five minutes?

One of those first-rounders got flipped to Kansas City for McDuffie. The other turned into Ty Simpson, who might be Stafford’s successor… except then Stafford got another extension anyway. Then, Verse and three more premium picks went to Cleveland for Garrett. As it stands, the Rams don’t have another first-round pick until 2028, and a lot of the young core that helped them reset is getting close to payday.

The Rams might be the smartest team-building operation in the league right now. Or they might just be completely hooked on living right on the edge, peeking over it, and deciding — every single time — that the view is worth it.

The First Blueprint Barely Survived Its Own Success

It’s kind of wild how easy it is to forget just how bad things were for the Rams before McVay showed up. He flipped the whole thing so fast that it almost feels like a different franchise.

In 2016, they went 4-12. Jeff Fisher got canned with three games left. Rookie Jared Goff lost all seven of his starts. Todd Gurley was there, but the offense still finished dead last with 224 points. Ten straight losing seasons. They were back in Los Angeles, sure, but there wasn’t much about the actual team that made you want to tune in.

And honestly, Les Snead could’ve gone down with Fisher. He’d been there since 2012 and hadn’t built a winner yet. There were some big misses along the way, no question. But he also drafted Aaron Donald, Gurley, Rob Havenstein, Michael Brockers, and made that bold move up to No. 1 for Goff. Even then, you could see the two things that would end up defining this era: he could find real talent, and he wasn’t afraid to get creative with trades.

Keeping him mattered more than people realized at the time. Snead didn’t pretend everything was fine. He knew what worked, knew what didn’t, and didn’t waste time defending the old roster. Then came McVay — 30 years old, not even 31 yet — the youngest head coach in modern NFL history. They brought in Wade Phillips to run the defense and balance things out. Andrew Whitworth showed up to protect Goff and basically teach the locker room how to act like a real team. Robert Woods came home. John Sullivan steadied the line. And the draft brought in guys like Cooper Kupp, John Johnson III, and a handful of others who’d end up playing big roles.

They were aggressive that offseason, but not in the flashy, headline-grabbing way we’d end up getting used to. They weren’t chasing big names. They were fixing the foundation.

McVay’s first job wasn’t even X’s and O’s — it was changing the vibe. The whole “We Not Me” thing (which ended up turning into “We Then Me”) could’ve easily been just another slogan on a wall, but they actually lived it. McVay leaned on veteran coaches instead of acting like he had all the answers at 30. He and Snead built this partnership where they’d argue things out behind closed doors, pick a direction, and then move forward without second-guessing or finger-pointing. McVay summed it up later in a pretty simple way: work together, make the call, and don’t look back.

On the field, the change was immediate. McVay put Goff under center, built everything around outside-zone runs and play-action, used motion to mess with defenses, and kept the same personnel out there so opponents couldn’t adjust easily. Gurley became the engine without the offense becoming predictable. Woods and Kupp gave Goff reliable options. Whitworth gave everything time to actually work.

The jump was ridiculous. The Rams scored 478 points in 2017 — more than double what they had the year before. They went from last in scoring to first, which had never happened before. They finished 11-5, won the NFC West for the first time since 2003, and suddenly McVay, Gurley, and Donald were all collecting major awards.

That should’ve been the start of a slow, steady build. Goff was 23. Gurley was 23. Donald was 26. Kupp was just getting started. McVay was barely 31. Everything lined up for patience.

But the Rams looked at that and basically said, “Yeah… we’re not waiting.”

They traded for Marcus Peters in February 2018. Aqib Talib showed up not long after. Ndamukong Suh signed in March. Then in April, Snead sent a first-round pick to New England for Brandin Cooks. In a matter of weeks, they went from a fun young team to something that looked a whole lot like a legitimate contender.

And for a while, it worked. They went 13-3. Gurley scored 21 touchdowns. Goff threw for nearly 4,700 yards. They beat Dallas and New Orleans and made it to the Super Bowl.

Then they ran into New England and scored three points.

Belichick basically took away everything they wanted to do — completely shutting down the run game and forcing McVay and Goff to figure it out on the fly. They never did.

McVay owned it right away. Said he got outcoached. And you could tell it stuck with him. Suddenly, that offense that looked unstoppable had a blueprint for how to slow it down. Then Gurley’s knee became a real issue. The offensive line started to break apart. Goff didn’t look the same once the structure around him slipped. They went 9-7 in 2019.

At that point, a lot of teams would’ve tried to hold onto what they had and hope it bounced back. Not the Rams.

They moved on from Gurley before his big extension even really kicked in. Cooks got extended, then traded. Goff signed a massive deal and was gone less than a year and a half later. When they traded Marcus Peters in 2019, Snead immediately flipped around and sent two first-round picks for Jalen Ramsey.

That Ramsey move wasn’t panic — it was a statement. They weren’t going to stay tied to past decisions just because they’d already invested in them. If there was a better option out there, they were going to go get it and figure the rest out later.

Sometimes that approach looks brilliant. Sometimes it looks chaotic. But McVay has convinced the entire organization of one thing: standing still is the real risk.

The Super Bowl Made Every Risk Worth It

The 2020 Rams were good enough to show that the whole thing still worked, but just flawed enough to remind McVay that “good” wasn’t going to cut it for him.

Brandon Staley’s defense was ridiculous — first in points allowed, first in yards allowed. Ramsey looked exactly like the guy they paid for, Donald grabbed another Defensive Player of the Year, and they still went just 10-6. They even went into Seattle and won a playoff game with Goff coming off the bench, thumb still fresh from surgery.

But behind the scenes, things between McVay and Goff were pretty clearly running on fumes. McVay was frustrated with the turnovers and what he felt like the offense couldn’t do. Goff, on the other hand, didn’t feel trusted anymore. McVay has since owned that he didn’t handle the breakup well, and Goff going on to revive his career in Detroit made sure that whole situation never really faded away.

Still, the Rams pulled the trigger. January of 2021, they sent Goff, two future firsts, and a third to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. Some of that price was basically paying the Lions to take Goff’s contract. The rest? That was McVay betting there was a real gap between a quarterback who could run his system and one who could actually elevate it.

Snead framed it as a chance to go from good to great at the most important position on the field. Honestly, that might be the closest thing this team has to a mission statement.

Stafford opened things up in a way McVay hadn’t really had before. More shotgun, more empty sets, more freedom. Stafford could move defenders with his eyes, throw guys open, and fix plays when everything broke down. McVay didn’t have to script every answer anymore — he had a quarterback who could meet him halfway.

And they didn’t stop there. Cam Akers tears his Achilles? Go get Sony Michel. Need a pass rusher? Trade for Von Miller. Odell Beckham Jr. gets released? Bring him in. Then Woods tears his ACL the next day, and suddenly OBJ isn’t just a luxury — he’s necessary. By the time the playoffs rolled around, the roster was stacked: Stafford, Kupp, Beckham, Whitworth, Donald, Ramsey, Miller.

There was nothing subtle about it. They’d already burned through years of first-round picks and then kept spending Day 2 picks to finish the job. It was all-in, no hiding it. The whole thing depended on the stars staying healthy, and Stafford finally shaking off every Detroit joke about him when January hit.

And somehow, it all worked.

They handled Arizona, survived that near meltdown in Tampa after blowing a 27-3 lead, and finally got past San Francisco after coming back from 10 down in the fourth. In the Super Bowl, Beckham went down early and the run game completely disappeared. Cincinnati took the lead late. No panic — Stafford and Kupp just go on a 15-play drive like it’s nothing, ending with Kupp’s second touchdown. Donald slams the door on fourth down with a sack to seal the deal.

Rams win it, 23-20, in their own stadium.

Kupp walked away from that season with everything — triple crown, Offensive Player of the Year, Super Bowl MVP. Stafford won four playoff games in year one. Miller and Beckham went from midseason additions to essential pieces. Ramsey and Stafford justified every pick tied to their names.

That’s why it’s hard to argue with any of it now. Whatever the cost was, they got the ring. There’s no alternate version of those picks that guarantees anything close to that. They weren’t trying to win some offseason value debate — they wanted confetti falling at SoFi, and they got it.

The “F them picks” shirt Snead wore at the parade kind of became the whole brand, but it also oversimplified what they were actually doing. They never stopped caring about the draft. Kupp, Donald, Gurley, Havenstein, Higbee, Ernest Jones, Jordan Fuller — those guys were all homegrown. They still made plenty of picks, even without first-rounders.

What they pushed back on was the idea that a first-round pick is automatically more valuable than a proven elite player who fits your window right now.

The real gamble was believing McVay and his staff could keep finding value outside the first round to keep things afloat. And that Kroenke would keep writing the checks while Tony Pastoors worked his magic with the cap to make it all fit. Snead gets the headlines, but this whole thing only works because ownership is willing to spend and the cap guys can keep it from blowing up immediately.

Eventually, though, the bill shows up.

Whitworth retires. Miller leaves. Beckham spends the next year rehabbing. The offensive line falls apart — 11 different starting combos in 11 games, 59 sacks allowed. Then Kupp, Stafford, and Donald all go down in November. They finish 5-12, worst record ever for a defending Super Bowl champ.

It looked like every criticism of their approach hit at once. Expensive, aging roster. No depth. No draft capital to fix it quickly. McVay’s getting asked every week if he’s about to leave for TV. He came back, but he did end up admitting just how close he was.

“I was counting down the days for that season to be over... I couldn’t handle the losing.”

That tells you everything about the flip side of how they operate. McVay doesn’t just like winning — he kind of needs it. He’s built his whole career on the idea that he can solve whatever’s in front of him. And the first time that stopped being true, it almost pushed him out entirely.

Staying meant he had to reinvent things again — and honestly, that might’ve been the most important move of all.

The “Rebuild” Proved They Could Win Another Way

Snead never liked calling 2023 a rebuild. He kept going with “remodel,” which, truthfully, does sound a lot better. His thinking was simple: if you’ve still got Stafford, Kupp, and Donald, you’re not tearing the whole thing down — you’re just knocking out a few walls. From the outside, though? It looked like they grabbed a sledgehammer and didn’t really hold back.

Ramsey got sent to Miami for a third-round pick and Hunter Long. Leonard Floyd was cut. Bobby Wagner was gone after one season. Allen Robinson got shipped to Pittsburgh. The Rams were sitting on about $75 million in dead money, and somehow still had almost as much tied up in Stafford, Kupp, and Donald as they did in everyone else combined. Snead even joked they were the “boring Rams,” which would’ve sounded insane a year earlier. They also made 14 draft picks — more than any other team.

No first-round pick, obviously. That went out the door in the Stafford deal. They started at No. 36 with Steve Avila, then grabbed Byron Young and Kobie Turner in the third. Puka Nacua didn’t show up until the fifth. Warren McClendon Jr., Davis Allen, Desjuan Johnson, and Ethan Evans came later. By Week 1, the Rams had the second-youngest roster in the league, just over 25 years old on average.

This was supposed to be the quiet year. The reset. Take a breath, figure things out, come back stronger later. Instead, the rookies kind of blew that plan up.

Nacua went off — 105 catches, 1,486 yards, both rookie records. Turner led all rookies with nine sacks. Young added eight. Avila started every game at left guard. Four Rams made the PFWA All-Rookie Team, more than anyone else. Kyren Williams, in year two, ran for 1,144 yards and 12 touchdowns even though he missed four games.

They started 3-6, which felt about right for what people expected. Then they won seven of their last eight. The season ended with a 24-23 playoff loss in Detroit — Goff beating Stafford and the team that moved on from him. Still, it didn’t feel like a failure. It felt like they showed up way earlier than they were supposed to.

For McVay, it hit a little deeper than that. He’s talked about how that group helped him find his way again. Coaching a bunch of young guys pulled him back into teaching and developing — the stuff that kind of gets lost when it’s Super Bowl or bust every year. The Rams realized they didn’t have to buy every answer. And McVay realized he didn’t have to keep running the same offense just because it worked before.

Early on, everything was 11 personnel — one back, one tight end, three receivers — and built off outside zone. The league spent years copying it, hiring his assistants, figuring out how to slow it down. By 2023, the Rams had bigger guards like Avila and Kevin Dotson, a downhill runner in Williams, and honestly no real reason to keep pretending the old system had to be the foundation.

So they changed it. More gap schemes, more man-blocking. They ran 204 man-blocking plays that year; the next closest team had 127. The offense got more physical — less about stretching defenses side to side, more about just moving people out of the way. And they kept leaning into it. A couple years later, when Nacua got hurt before a game in London, McVay rolled out 13 personnel — one back, three tight ends, one receiver — and Stafford threw five touchdowns in a 35-7 win. What started as a backup plan turned into something real.

That’s kind of McVay in a nutshell. He’s not stubborn about proving his original idea still works. He adjusts, steals ideas, tweaks things — whatever fits the guys he has now. All four of his offensive coordinators through 2025 — Matt LaFleur, Kevin O’Connell, Liam Coen, and Mike LaFleur — ended up as NFL head coaches. Defensive assistants Brandon Staley and Raheem Morris did too. The staff gets picked apart, the scheme keeps evolving, and somehow the Rams just keep rolling.

The roster build sped up again in 2024. Donald retired, which took away the one guy who covered up just about every defensive mistake for years. For the first time since drafting Goff in 2016, the Rams actually used a first-round pick, taking Verse at No. 19. Then Snead traded a future second to move up for Verse’s Florida State teammate, Braden Fiske.

Verse won Defensive Rookie of the Year. Fiske had 8.5 sacks and was a finalist for the same award. The Rams started 1-4 while injuries piled up, then bounced back to win the NFC West at 10-7. They beat Minnesota in a wild-card game moved to Arizona because of the Southern California wildfires, then came within one late drive of knocking off Philadelphia in the snow.

By then, the “rebuild” had quietly turned into another contender. Younger, cheaper, and built through the part of the draft they used to treat like an afterthought. The 2023 and 2024 classes gave them Nacua, Avila, Turner, Young, Verse, Fiske, Kamren Kinchens, Blake Corum, Jordan Whittington, and Beaux Limmer. They didn’t just survive without first-round picks — they built most of a lineup without them.

The 2025 season felt like it should lock in the new plan. Kupp was released after they couldn’t find a trade partner — another one of those moves where they moves on before anyone else probably would've. Adams signed a two-year deal to replace him. Snead traded the No. 26 pick and No. 101 to Atlanta for No. 46, No. 242, and a 2026 first-rounder, turning that into Terrance Ferguson and a future pick that eventually landed at No. 13.

Then Stafford went out and played the best regular-season football of his life. The Rams led the NFL with 518 points. Nacua caught 129 passes for 1,715 yards. Adams led the league with 14 receiving touchdowns. Williams ran for 1,252 yards, and Corum added 746 at 5.1 a carry. McVay’s tight-end-heavy offense became one of the biggest talking points in the league. They finished 12-5 and made it to the NFC Championship Game.

The 31-27 loss in Seattle stung because they were right there. Stafford threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns. They had the ball late with a chance to take the lead. Then a muffed punt handed Seattle a touchdown, and Sam Darnold lit them up for 346 yards and three more scores.

At that point, the Rams had rebuilt the roster, reshaped the offense, and gotten within one stop of another NFC title. The safe move would’ve been to stick with the young core, use two first-round picks to build around them, and trust they’d get another shot. Snead and McVay don’t really do safe. They saw a window — and decided it was big enough to go after again.

The Most Dangerous Version Of The Rams Yet

The Rams locked up McVay and Snead back in February. They know what they have in this pairing, and clearly have no plans of splitting them up any time soon. It takes them into a 10th season together without all the weird uncertainty that hung around after their last Super Bowl run. Since 2017, they’ve gone 92-57, made the playoffs seven times, won the NFC twice and got a ring. Only Andy Reid and Brett Veach have more wins as an HC-GM duo in that stretch. And once those extensions were done, it felt like they gave themselves permission to go for it again.

The NFC Championship Game made one thing pretty clear: the secondary wasn’t holding up. The pass rush was young and promising, the offense was rolling, but the corners just weren’t built for another January run. Three of them were about to hit free agency, too. So the first big move was McDuffie.

The Rams sent Kansas City the 29th pick, a couple late picks down the road, and a future third. In return, they got a guy with two All-Pros, two rings, and the ability to play pretty much anywhere in the secondary. Then they handed him a four-year, $124 million extension with $100 million guaranteed — headline-wise, the highest-paid corner in the league. Watson came next as a free agent from Kansas City on a three-year deal, bringing back a duo that already knew how to win together.

Honestly, that alone could’ve been enough to call the Rams the offseason winners. They basically flipped one first-round pick into fixing their biggest weakness and still kept No. 13 from the Falcons trade.

Then came the Garrett trade.

Snead spent a couple months trying to make it work with just picks, but Cleveland wasn’t budging. It only changed when Verse got involved, and McVay admitted that was the toughest part. That says a lot. This wasn’t them giving up on a young player — they really liked Verse. They just saw Garrett as one of those rare chances you don’t pass up.

McVay even compared it to the Stafford move. Basically saying that these opportunities don’t come around often, so when they do, you go get them.

Garrett’s older than Verse by five years, but he’s on another level. Eight straight seasons with at least 10 sacks, 125.5 total in nine years. And he did a lot of that on a Browns team that didn’t exactly force opponents into obvious passing situations. Now he’s joining an offense that scores over 30 points a game.

And just to make things even more ridiculous, Aaron Donald has been working out at the facility and might be thinking about a comeback. Nothing’s official, and yeah, he’s 35 and hasn’t played in two years, so you can’t count on it. But the idea of him joining this group? It almost feels too perfect.

All of this changes how teams have to deal with the Rams. Garrett’s going to draw all the attention — double teams, chips, everything. That frees up guys like Young, who already had 12 sacks last year. Turner and Fiske should get cleaner looks inside. The secondary can be more aggressive because the ball should come out quicker. It just makes everything easier.

Then they used the 13th pick on Simpson. He’d only started one season at Alabama and wasn’t exactly seen as a top-of-the-draft, can’t-miss guy. Taking him at 13 caught a lot of people off guard. It was just the second first-rounder the Rams had used since Goff in 2016.

But there’s a logic to it, even if it feels a little weird at first. Stafford just won MVP, but he’s also 38. The Rams remember what happened the last time they waited too long to plan for the future. Getting a quarterback now gives Simpson time to sit, learn, and not have to carry anything right away. It also protects them in case they don’t have a first-round pick when they actually need a successor.

That part got even more interesting a few weeks later. First, they gave Stafford a one-year, $55 million extension that can go up to $60 million, keeping him around through 2027. So now you’ve got a big investment in the present and a big investment in the future at the same time. It’s not either-or — they’re trying to have both.

The contract side of it is… complicated. Garrett’s deal is about $208 million over five years, with a lot of that money pushed into the future. His cap hit is manageable now, but it jumps quite a bit in a couple years.

But this team is worth going all-in on. Stafford’s playing as well as he ever has. Nacua's already one of the best receivers in the league. Adams is still a problem in the red zone. The run game is legit with Williams and Corum. The offensive line is solid again, and they’ve even leaned into tight ends more by drafting Klare. On defense, you’ve got Garrett leading a front with Young, Turner and Fiske, plus a revamped secondary behind them.

There’s not really a glaring weakness you can point to and say, “That’s why this won’t work.” Which is exciting… and also a little scary.

Because that 2023 draft class is about to get expensive. Nacua, Turner, Young, and Avila could all hit free agency soon if they’re not extended. Nacua alone might reset the receiver market. And while they’ve got some cap space now, those big contracts for McDuffie, Watson and Garrett are going to hit harder later.

Simpson's supposed to ease the future at quarterback, but he’s still completely unproven. If Stafford falls off quickly, they don’t have an easy backup plan. If Garrett slows down, they’ll be paying a lot for average production. And if injuries pile up in the wrong spots, things could go sideways fast.

That doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom if they don’t win it all. The Rams have shown they can rebuild on the fly. They’ve hit on draft picks without having premium ones. McVay's gotten teams through rough stretches before. But if they don’t win in the next couple years, they’re going to have some tough decisions.

That’s kind of the whole point, though. The Rams live right on that edge.

They’re both a blueprint for how to build a modern team and a team that’s constantly flirting with things blowing up. And honestly, those two things go hand in hand.

Most teams stick with what worked. The Rams don’t. McVay changed his offense when he needed to. They moved on from Goff for Stafford. They’ve rebuilt the roster multiple times in different ways. They don’t treat past success like a rulebook — they treat it as a starting point.

Yeah, it can get messy. There are real risks like dead money and missing draft picks. But it’s also led to a ton of success in a short time.

Now they’ve put together maybe their most talented roster yet. They fixed the secondary, added the best pass rusher in football, planned for the future at quarterback, and kept their MVP around for a couple more runs. They’ve also made it pretty clear this isn’t just another season — they’re all in.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

Curious for more stories that keep you informed and entertained? From the latest headlines to everyday insights, YourLifeBuzz has more to explore. Dive into what’s next.