LOS ANGELES – For well over a decade now, general manager Les Snead and the Los Angeles Rams have consistently pulled off the aggressive, audacious moves that every NFL fan wishes their team would make.
Their latest deal is among the biggest and the riskiest — and it's totally their style.
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Myles Garrett walked into the Rams' training complex in Woodland Hills on Tuesday after LA gave up budding star Jared Verse and three high draft picks to complete one of the NFL's biggest trades in recent seasons.
“To acquire a player like this, these things don’t come up often,” coach Sean McVay said.
Yet this bold deal for arguably the greatest pass rusher of this generation is only the latest in the line of blockbuster trades engineered by Snead. In the past 10 years alone, he has maneuvered to get Jared Goff, Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey, Von Miller, Trent McDuffie, Brandin Cooks and other veterans for trade prices that would have been too steep for many front offices.
The Rams have spent a decade chasing rings with an urgency that screams “win now,” but is actually rooted in an organizational confidence that McVay's coaching ability will make up for the sacrifices necessary in draft capital and veteran talent.
“You’re always threading that needle for sustainability, trying to win consistently,” Snead said Tuesday. “But it’s a hard one to thread.”
McVay is all in on the Rams' organizational urgency, since the coach is often the most aggressive voice in Snead's ear to get big deals done: “I'm not the most patient person,” McVay said with a smirk.
“To be able to add players like (Garrett) is so rare,” McVay added. “We feel really fortunate that this feels very similar to when we were fortunate enough to acquire a player like Matthew Stafford. Things like this don’t present themselves, and we wanted to be aggressive.”
These opportunities might be rare, but the Rams have seized a whole lot more of them than other teams — and they were already a top Super Bowl contender even before they landed Garrett.
Snead addressed Los Angeles' primary weakness three months ago by acquiring McDuffie, making him the NFL's highest-paid cornerback and re-pairing him with free-agent signee Jaylen Watson, his longtime Chiefs teammate.
But even with a defensive line featuring four above-average players all still on their rookie contracts, Snead and McVay wanted to improve.
The GM made contact with Browns counterpart Andrew Berry after the team adjusted Garrett's contract in a way that signaled a deal was possible for the All-Pro who had just set the NFL's single-season sacks record.
“Andrew and I have a good relationship, (and) we like talking football a good bit,” Snead said. “So I would pester him a little bit, probably jokingly at first. Kept doing that, and then we began talking a little more seriously.”
Snead hoped to do the deal only with picks, both before and after the current draft. Berry wanted Verse, the budding young star and the only first-round pick that Snead had actually made between quarterbacks Goff (2016) and Ty Simpson (2026).
Although both Snead and McVay claim they were reluctant to part with Verse, the Rams finally agreed with the backing of owner Stan Kroenke, who has been fully supportive of his front office's uncommon urgency.
Garrett was eager to join this franchise's lineage of superstar pass rushers stretching from the Fearsome Foursome to Aaron Donald. But he also agreed to the trade because after nine seasons in Cleveland, he finally wanted to play for a consistent contender.
That's what the Rams have been ever since McVay took over in 2017 — racking up eight winning seasons, seven playoff berths, four NFC West titles, three conference title game appearances, two Super Bowl berths and one ring.
“It just came down to the timing of everything," Garrett said. “What does it look like to be a winner now, and to have the opportunity to do that immediately? That was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
The Rams' aggression doesn't just apply to trades: Snead and McVay have also shown no hesitation to drop good players and franchise icons when they deem it necessary, either for reasons financial or competitive.
They've released Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp and star running back Todd Gurley, and they traded Goff and receiver Robert Woods before the contract extensions they had received from the Rams had even started.
Those moves often feel heartless to fans, and players like Goff and Kupp have expressed public dismay about the way Snead and McVay moved on from them. But everyone eventually seems to understand that this is how the Rams do business.
That includes Woods, a stalwart five-year contributor and a locker-room leader on McVay's early teams after signing as a free agent in 2017.
The Southern California native hurt his knee in practice midway through the 2021 season, forcing him to miss the Rams' Super Bowl championship run — and Snead traded him to Tennessee a month after the trophy was raised.
Woods bounced around the NFL for four more seasons before retiring earlier this year — and he quickly returned to the Rams as an assistant coach.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL