If humanity ever fell into the hands of robots like in The matrix and they tried to detail sports talk in spreadsheets, the current Los Angeles Rams-Myles Garrett situation would be filed under “TEAM FAILS ALL-IN TRADE” as all humans continue to be harvested into the organic power plant serving our machine overlords. But that would be a bad categorization of commerce.
The Rams have already gone all-in…in 2021, and they won the Super Bowl. It’s like The Rams Go All-In 2: Judgment Day, this time without Jalen Ramsey and Odell Beckham Jr. but with Davante Adams and Myles Garrett. But with Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay still there, and I don’t think you can call it some sort of failed experiment, because they achieved their original goal just five years ago. There is a statute of limitations of at least five years for reporting your lack of Super Bowl success.
I actually think the Myles Garrett trade should be filed under “BROWNS SELL HIGH ON 30-YEAR-OLD PASS RUSHER,” since the 4-2 Browns now look like geniuses at trading Garrett — who appears to have real knee issues that will keep him out for nearly half or more of the season — for a first, second, and third-round pick and an elite young upside in Jared Verse. It’s a comical thought experiment to ask whether the Browns would back out of the trade now if they had the chance, a classic red flag to tell the Rams they might be well and truly screwed.
It would be very convenient for the angle of this column if Verse played like crazy in Cleveland, but in reality that’s not the case; Some Browns social media tape watchers tell me it’s not as bad as it seems, but Verse clearly hasn’t recorded a sack this year. They need him, uh, do that. That’s all his work. But I’ve seen enough of Verse in Los Angeles to know he’s a great player – they don’t just hand out the Defensive Rookie of the Year award, and I believe he’ll end up being the most valuable part of Garrett’s return…
…Unless this disastrous 2-4 Rams season continues to crumble like a cookie you accidentally dropped in your teacup and now it’s completely disintegrating (gross). For those who don’t know, the offseason Super Bowl champion Rams are last in the NFC West after losing to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 6. They lost despite don’t give up a touchdown and themselves scoring two themselves – however, their new kicker Blake Grupe tore his ACL on a kickoff trying to tackle a returner and so they weren’t able to score for most of the game. Cardinals kicker Chad Ryland hit six field goals and won 18-16 on his own. Meanwhile, Davante Adams, one of two capable receivers this offense has, injured his hamstring on one of the final plays of the game and will miss six to 10 weeks.
The Rams, who were supposed to be a superteam, have been inventing interesting new ways to lose football games all season and are fairing towards giving the Browns a top 10 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. It’s a bit of an alarming situation, but it’s probably all alarmist rhetoric too – I seriously I have no doubt the Rams will go 4-13 this year and give the Browns a top-five pick. That would be completely ridiculous, but the Rams are way more vulnerable than we all thought. Stafford doesn’t look MVP at all, and the heat check decision to draft a quarterback with the 13th pick in last year’s draft could did too much. Maybe we could have signed, oh I don’t know, an offensive lineman, or a…defensive back, or like, a wide receiver, or something. Just a thought!
The Browns could instead benefit from a Rams team that looks like an injury from a total free fall. They’re now 0-2 in the NFC West and still have three games left against the Seahawks and 49ers, all of which have become USDA-certified must-wins, lest they want to start thinking about vacation destinations for January. Even if the Rams slightly of course they could always easily miss the NFC playoffs. Their schedule isn’t that tough, but they’ve already lost to the Broncos and Cardinals who are…not good, so I don’t feel comfortable predicting that they’ll run the standings against the Raiders, Chargers, Commanders, and Cardinals (again) like I would a few weeks ago.
The legacy of this trade cannot be decided after six weeks and will ultimately depend on its centerpiece. If Garrett returns at some point and transforms the Rams’ currently paltry defense into a competitive unit, then we can have a fair conversation. But I, someone who hates injury talk as much as anyone, am particularly concerned about his health. I don’t understand why the Rams treated this injury so casually in training camp, describing it as a “soreness”, having him play half a game in Week 1, clearly injured, then going on IR to have knee surgery. It almost feels like they made this trade without proper medical information, or at the very least mishandled the preseason.
The rationalist in me wants to say that the Rams have enough talent to turn things around. obviously, and that talent usually surpasses worst-case scenarios in the end. But the Rams are also short on talent — with Garrett and Adams out, the Rams also lost Kobie Turner and Poona Ford for extended stretches. What looked like a superteam trading away a worthless late-first-round pick now looks like a thinner-than-expected roster on the cusp of something. dark.
How dark is it? It will depend on whether the Rams can stabilize and stop struggling. Currently there are manufacturing losses like robots The matrix make humans. If we learned anything from the intro, we need to get out of The Matrix – because that is a really dark place.
Gn sports
