CLEVELAND, OHIO (TheOBR.com) - Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
I have been trying very hard not to talk myself into the Browns' post-Myles Garrett world too quickly, because I have seen this movie before and the third act usually involves a blocked field goal, a hamstring, and me staring at a laptop at 5:42 in the morning wondering why I chose this glamorous life of webdorkery.
But I am going to say something dangerous this morning.
Here goes: The Browns' trajectory looks better than it did the first time the Garrett trade punched us all in the sternum. Pete and I discussed it last night on Gang of Three, and I came away from the conversation much better than I did before.
Not fixed. Not solved. Not parade-route stuff, because if you are mapping parade routes in June around here, please hydrate and maybe talk to someone. But better. More coherent. More interesting. More like a team with a plan than a team that just watched its best player take the 8:15 to Los Angeles and left everyone else standing on the platform holding a half-eaten pretzel.
A couple of the Newswire stories this morning helped shove me in that direction, which is why I am now doing the thing I swore I would not do: finding reasons to feel optimistic about the Cleveland Browns. Pray for me.
Sam Penix's OBR film room piece on Jared Verse did the correct thing right up front: it acknowledged the unfairness of the comparison. Verse is not Myles Garrett. He is not going to be Myles Garrett. Very few human beings in the known universe are Myles Garrett, and most of them are probably kept in a lab somewhere because governments get nervous about that sort of thing.
Jared Verse and Jacques Cesaire
Jared Verse and Jacques Cesaire (Photo: Getty)
But the film-room piece also lays out why the Browns pushed for Verse as the centerpiece once the Rams were willing to put him into the deal. Verse was the 19th overall pick in 2024, already has Defensive Rookie of the Year on his resume, already has two Pro Bowls, and has produced pressure in bunches — 89 pressures and 4.5 sacks as a rookie, then 100 pressures and 7.5 sacks in year two, including playoff work. At 6-foot-4 and 260 pounds, he is not a weird science project. He is a serious young edge defender.
That is the easy part to understand. The harder part (for me, at least) is what kind of defender he is and what kind of defense the Browns can build around him.
Garrett was the sun. Everything bent around him. Opposing protections were obsessed with him. The Browns' pass rush bent around him. The weekly conversation bent around him. When you have a player like that, the temptation is to say, "Well, Myles will fix it," and, appropriately enough, he often did. That is the gift of having a Hall of Fame-level player. It is also the organizational pothole of having one.
Verse feels different. He is powerful, physical, relentless, and — based on both the production and the reputation — the sort of player whose value is not limited to the four snaps a game when he makes a tackle look like he has misplaced his car keys. He may be easier to scheme with because he is not the one-man cheat code who encourages everyone else to wait for the cheat code to do cheat-code things.
That is not an insult to Garrett. It is football geometry. Garrett was like a meteor coming around the edge. He could beat his opponent in a variety of powerful and unpredictable ways. Verse is more likely to go through than around. He's linear. He's useful on stunts. You know where he's going to be, what he's going to be doing, who he'll be doing it to, and how much his victim wishes he would stop.
With Verse, new defensive coordinator Mike Rutenberg can keep the attack-style bones of the scheme, as Zac Jackson noted in The Athletic while pointing out the Browns are leaning into Verse and linebacker Carson Schwesinger as new defensive faces, but perhaps spread the burden around in a healthier way.
And then there is the leadership piece, which matters more now than it did two weeks ago.
When a franchise moves on from a player like Garrett, the empty space is not just about sacks. It is about Sundays when things go sideways. It is about whether the defense looks around for a grown-up and finds one. Verse has the personality and competitive profile of a guy the Browns can actually sell as part of the next thing.
Garrett, for all his transcendent qualities, was not "that guy" for the Browns. He was what he was, but "leader" is not an adjective that applied to him.
That is important because, as The Athletic piece also noted, Denzel Ward and Grant Delpit (again, watch Gang for Pete's take on this) have their own big-picture questions swirling around them. The Browns are trying to communicate direction without using the word rebuild, because no NFL team likes that word unless it is printed on someone else's media guide. Verse helps them do that. So does draft capital. Pete's 2027 mock draft piece underlined the other side of the trade: Cleveland now has more ammunition, including the extra first-round pick and two fourth-rounders added through recent trades.
That matters. A lot.
If the Browns have a young edge who can play at a Pro Bowl level, a defense that can be designed around multiple answers instead of one supernova, and the draft capital to keep stacking talent or address quarterback if necessary, the trade starts to look less like surrender and more like a step forward.
I still hate that we had to have this conversation. I also hate kale, robo-calls, and the Steelers existing, but life is full of unpleasant realities.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond...
As a human of average intelligence, it's my job to stand around, be fat, and (in good times) nurse a beer and ponder the doneness of whatever poor animal whose fate it was to be on my charcoal grill. I'm OK with that.
Smart humans, however, are doing smart human things that have tremendous import down the road for all of us.
For example, today's lift contains a Space.com story about scientists proposing a system to spray chemicals into Earth's magnetic field to reduce the impact of powerful solar storms. I am not saying this relates to the Browns offensive line, but "actively strengthen the shield before disaster arrives" is not the worst organizational slogan I have ever heard.
The Good News Network has a fun science item this morning about astronomers opening what they call a "new window" on exoplanets after a landmark first detection of magnetospheres.
The short version — because I am not going to pretend that my caffeinated brain suddenly became NASA with a coffee mug — is that a planet generally needs an atmosphere to be habitable, and a magnetosphere helps protect that atmosphere. Scientists have now found the strongest evidence yet of magnetic fields around distant worlds, which gives them another way to understand whether planets beyond our solar system might have the right kind of protection.
So, yes, today's theme apparently is shields. Earth's shield. Exoplanet shields. Jared Verse as part of a newly rebuilt defensive shield.
Look at us, tying the room together like a discount Midwestern Dude.
WRAPPING UP
When not trying to convince himself that optimism is a medical condition covered by insurance, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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