The Draw Play

Well I don’t think any of us woke up Monday, June 2nd, 2026, expecting to get nuked. Least of all poor Jared Verse. Remember this next time you have a bad Monday. Jared Verse was a rising star defensive player on a Super Bowl-caliber team, living it up in sunny southern California. The next day he discovers his team has sent him to work for the fucking Cleveland Browns. That’s an all-timer shit Monday. Garfield would be proud.

As is required in all trade events, we now must armchair-examine the result before anything has happened. Let’s start with the Rams first because that one is easy to understand.

The Rams are win-now. The window is open, and they want to crash through it harder than a Hollywood stuntman. Along with Trent McDuffie and Jalen Watson as the big secondary acquisitions and convincing Stafford to stick around for another season, the Rams are down bad. Last time they won a Super Bowl by having the best defensive player in the league on the roster and trading away a Jared. Now they’ve done it again.

This does make the Ty Simpson even more baffling. The Rams don’t seem to be trying to future proof the roster, they are present-proofing it. Spending #13 on a guy who shouldn’t see the field for at minimum a year is…confusing. Especially now, after shipping away valuable picks for the immediate future. But the given picks weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be.

Do I like this trade for LA? Hard not to. The Rams got better. Unless something catastrophic happens, I don’t see how they aren’t the instant SB favorites.

THE BROWNS!
I…also like this trade for Cleveland. Cleveland is in rebuild mode. Keeping Garrett on the roster might not make much financial sense, as he takes up a huge portion of the salary cap and after last year is living proof that non-QBs just can’t drag teams into relevance. Also, while we can’t say Garrett has lost any steps, he is now officially over the 30 line. Verse is younger, cheaper, and also a massive stud, albeit lesser. He’s a good investment for the future.

I think at this point the Browns are keeping Watson on for 2026 since they can finally cut him for a lower penalty next year. The worst contract in history may have claimed Garrett as its last victim. But retooling and tanking this season is fine and probably expected. The roster is a mess, and Sanders/Gabriel are both likely future backups but now you get another year to evaluate them. On top of that, the Browns get a 2027 first rounder, 2028 second rounder, and a 2029 third rounder. Good future investment assets. Now the Browns have to hope Stafford eats an Achilles’ tear or something so that 2027 first-rounder isn’t pick #30+.

I just hope no Browns are expecting to be happy this year. Of course if you are a Browns fan I’m not sure why you’d ever expect happiness to begin with.

AJ Brown also got traded a few hours later but thanks to the in-depth reporting of Diana Russini, we knew that was coming ages ago. Man, she really called that. What did she know?