Why the Rams Pulled the Trigger on the Myles Garrett Trade With SoFi Hosting the 2027 Super Bowl
The Los Angeles Rams are not playing for next year. They are playing for February 14, 2027, and they just paid a king’s ransom to make sure they are ready for it.
The Rams acquired two-time Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett from the Cleveland Browns on June 2 in exchange for two-time Pro Bowl pass rusher Jared Verse and three premium draft picks. Cleveland got a 2027 first-rounder, a 2028 second-rounder and a 2029 third-rounder. Los Angeles got the most dominant edge rusher in the NFL.
The timing is everything. Super Bowl LXI is at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day 2027. Hosting your own Super Bowl is the kind of thing that motivates a front office to push the chips in. Sean McVay and Les Snead are not subtle about their willingness to mortgage the future to win now. This trade is more of the same.
Garrett is coming off the best year of his career. He broke the NFL’s single-season sack record with 23 sacks in 2025 and added 33 tackles for loss. He has been first-team All-Pro five times in the past six seasons. He has hit at least 12 sacks in each of the past six. There is not a more reliable pass rusher in football.
The Browns side of this is the harder one to evaluate. Cleveland gave up the best defensive player they have ever drafted. Verse is good, real good, but he is not Garrett. He is 24 with two seasons of NFL experience and a Defensive Rookie of the Year trophy from 2024. The picks are the real prize for Cleveland, particularly the 2027 first.
Browns fans are not happy, and you cannot really blame them. Garrett was the franchise. Watching him leave at age 30, still at his peak, is the kind of move that fanbases do not forget. The fact that Andrew Berry got real draft capital in return is small comfort.
For the Rams, this is a championship play. Adding Garrett to a defense that already includes Verse last year and other established veterans gives them one of the scariest fronts in the league. Combine that with Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua and the rest of the offense, and Los Angeles is now a real Super Bowl favorite.
The risk is age and contract. Garrett is on a massive deal. The Rams are paying real money to make this work, and they are doing so while pushing future cap commitments down the road. If they win in 2026, it will all be worth it. If they do not, the next few years are going to be tight.
Denzel Ward, the Browns star cornerback, made clear Saturday that he is not asking out following the trade. That is a relief for Cleveland. The team needed someone to publicly commit to staying through the rebuild, and Ward did so at his celebrity softball game.
The Rams have not been quiet for a year now. The Garrett trade is the biggest swing of the bunch. The bet is that one player at that level can change a championship window. Garrett has done it before in stretches. Now he has to do it for 17 weeks in Los Angeles, with the Super Bowl waiting at home.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
