Since he arrived in Northeast Ohio in June — his world rocked by being traded from the Los Angeles Rams after a pair of Pro Bowl seasons — Jared Verse has made something abundantly clear.
He isn’t interested in being compared to Myles Garrett.
His aspirations are more grandiose.
“I think Nick Saban said it best. You can be bad, you can be average, you can be good, you can be great, and then you can be excellent,” Verse told The Chronicle-Telegram in an interview last week. “And obviously everyone strives to be in that excellent, amazing, star-studded, generational conversation. And to get there, it takes so much. Yeah, you need natural talent sometimes and that helps a lot. I wasn’t naturally talented because I had one offer out of high school. It just comes from work. You just got to keep working, keep working, keep working.
“I just want to be the best. I worked so hard that for me to not be the best almost seems unfair to a point.”
The mindset is rare. It may be one of a kind for someone with his history.
Verse’s journey gets more remarkable with each chapter.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The powerful 6-foot-4, 260-pounder looks the part as an NFL defensive end. He didn’t always.
And for much of his life, the idea he’s going “to raise the standard of any defensive player, period” seemed ludicrous.
Not to Verse.
He’s always thought that way.
“Genuinely, and I’m not even trying to be funny when I say it, it was when I stepped on a football field,” he said. “I was a running back first and I was outrunning everyone.
“And then I remember actually a moment, it was the seventh grade. We had the A team and the B team. I got put on the B team and I was a little shocked by it because I thought I was the best. I was like, ‘All right, cool.’ Started going to the gym with my dad in seventh grade, started working more, started hitting the field more, flipping tires, doing this, that, the third. Boom, got moved up. We ended up moving. I was on JV, boom, whatever, trying to work my way to varsity, moved to varsity. Just kept getting better and better. I’m always thinking if I work harder, I’ll get what I want.”
What’s the root of that mindset?
“It’s just the environment I’ve been in,” he said.
That’s his parents, Eric and Jannienne. She was vice president of a hospital, and he was in the Marines and an engineer in a management position.
“He’s a self-made player,” coach Todd Monken said. “Anybody who plays as hard and works as hard as he does, it’s easy to listen to and follow. You can see it when you meet his parents.”
When Verse, who was the key piece in the blockbuster trade that sent NFL Defensive Player of the Year Garrett to the Rams, gets on his teammates for not working or studying hard enough, he’s channeling his dad.
“I mean, 100 percent,” Verse said. “I’m a grown man now, he’ll still do that to me. He’ll still be like, ‘Hey, I expect this from you. I expect that from you.’ That’s just the expectation my family has for me because they know me very well. My mom will do the same thing.”
He inherited something else from Mom and Dad, and it was obvious at every training camp practice. Whether it was encouraging the rest of the defense, trash talking to the offense or singing along with the music, he never shut up.
“Everybody looks at me and they’re like, ‘Oh, he’s a loud person.’ That’s just my whole family,” said Verse, who speaks like a podcast on 2x.
The rise from grade-school B team to NFL stud included a couple of more detours.
He was 6-3, 200 pounds when he graduated from Central Columbia High School in Pennsylvania and wasn’t heavily recruited. He had played tight end and wide receiver but wanted to make the move to defensive end.
“I looked like more of a basketball player than a football player,” Verse said. “Then Albany was able to take that chance on me. Coach (Greg) Gattuso just put full belief in me at Albany, let me go out there.
“COVID hit. I gained about 50 pounds of muscle, got drug tested two times a week. And then from the rest of that, it’s history.”
BIGGER AND BETTER
Verse immediately put his name high on the charts of the state-of-the-art machines in Cleveland’s weight room. Power is his game and he’s proud of that.
“His bull rush is insane,” Bills five-time Pro Bowl left tackle Dion Dawkins said after a joint practice. “He’s going to rack up sacks all season long. I’m a Verse fan.”
While Verse was always strong, he wasn’t top-of-the-NFL powerful until the pandemic. He went home and trained in the backyard with his dad. The transformation led to a transfer to Florida State and eventually being the No. 19 pick of the Rams in 2024, when he was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.
“When we got into COVID and lifting every day, it was just a different grind,” he said. “All you could do was lift because you got Zoom classes, but that’s two hours a day. Sleep eight hours, that gives you 14 hours to work. And, shoot, you do two-hour workout, relax for two hours, go back to it a couple hours later. I was doing two, three workouts a day. It was different.”
He grew into a defensive end but the decision to switch positions had already been made. Verse’s dad was the first to suggest it.
“I love the rock in my hand. I love rushing down the field, making moves and everything like that,” Verse said. “But it got to a point I was like, ‘I know I could be better at D-end.’”
The Garrett comparisons will never go away. They play the same position and were traded for each other. Verse, who will turn 26 in November, has a lot of catching up to do.
He had 4.5 sacks as a rookie and 7.5 last year, but 77 and 80 pressures, which ranked near the top of the league. He added five forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and three passes defensed.
He attended the Sack Summit this summer in Las Vegas along with several of the league’s pass rushers. He got a similar tip from Von Miller (138.5 sacks, eight Pro Bowls) and Maxx Crosby (69.5, five).
“They were talking about just adding a move off the bull rush,” Verse said. “Try a bull counter, bull this, bull hump, bull that, bull whatever. They’re giving me a bunch of different moves to try.”
The goal is to turn the pressures into sacks.
“It’s just finishing,” he told reporters. “Pressures don’t mean anything if you can’t finish. As many times I get back there I want to finish.
“It’s just working on grip strength and everything like that. Quarterbacks are getting stronger. They’ll be able to move a little bit faster. So if you get your hands on them, you might not get another chance to do that. You just got to handle it right then and there.”
TRUE LEADER
Verse expects a lot of himself and his teammates. He beat long odds to get where he is and demands excellence.
So many of his teammates at Florida State and in the NFL were five-star recruits out of high school. He wasn’t. While they were collecting NIL money and training at the country’s best facilities, he was at Albany and working in the warehouse at Amazon and delivering DoorDash.
“You do what you got to do. Sometimes everything’s not glorious,” he said. “Sometimes you just got to do the dirty work. Hey, go to Amazon, I was working about 10-hour days, go home, relax. Hey, next day, off day, boom, we DoorDash for a couple hours, go home, take a nap, go back, we’re DoorDashing again. Work out, go back, DoorDash after that.
“It’s a different type of grind.”
When he arrived at Florida State, he put his new teammates on notice he was on their level.
“Five-star recruits are very cool for high schoolers,” he said. “I said, you’re a five-star, you’re a five-star, that don’t mean nothing now. We’re grown men.
“I think it definitely gave me the mindset that I have to work harder because obviously you strive to be that. You don’t want to be underlooked. But when you are, I think your mindset’s a lot different.”
Verse’s expressive personality got him into trouble early in his tenure with the Rams. Coach Sean McVay told him he couldn’t talk to everyone the same way if he’s trying to get the most from them.
“I had to voice it the correct way,” Verse said. “I can be more loud, more vocal with the young dudes.”
He hushed his voice when discussing veteran defensive tackle Maliek Collins.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, bro, I need more from you,’” Verse said.
“He’s a different guy. He’s been in the league for 10 plus years, way longer than me, but he also wants me to call him out like he would me.”
He learned his lesson, quickly became a leader with the Browns and makes it a point to shake the hand of every defender every practice during stretching.
“I swear I didn’t even know he was in his third year the way he carries himself, the way he’s vocal about things, being the natural leader that he is already,” safety Grant Delpit. “It’s not an easy situation to handle what he handled. He’s handling it as well as he can.”
Verse didn’t want to leave L.A. He had success there, was close with teammates and the Rams are perennial Super Bowl contenders.
He quickly made peace with the new reality and isn’t looking back.
“I could sit down and be angry every day,” he said. “I could be frustrated and be like, oh, I had to move. I had to get out of my house. I had to leave my teammates. I could start getting upset and being more emotional, say, oh, they didn’t believe in me. They didn’t think I was good enough, this, that, the third. It’s football. I get it’s a business and … I’m not upset that I’m here. I’m happy to be with these guys. I’m happy to be in Cleveland.
“The fans are freaking insane, I love every moment of it. It gave me something to realize. I don’t want to say I got comfortable. I started feeling myself more. I started feeling more in a calm position, and it gave me that mindset back that I got to be better. I got to grind more. I started hitting the gym more. I started hitting the field more. I started seeing myself get back to those, honestly, those Albany days and that mindset and I’m happy because that’s exactly what I needed.”
The quest to be the best is never far from mind.
“Obviously I want to be the best player I can possibly be, get all the sacks, get Defense Player of the Year, go to the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl,” Verse said. “But the biggest thing I care about is just what’s happening today, and that’s just to make my teammates better out there in any aspect I possibly can.”
