Can Jared Verse have an immediate impact on Rams pass rush?

Despite OTA’s and training camp not too far away, it still seems hard to believe that the Los Angeles Rams will be without Aaron Donald this season. The Rams will be looking for multiple players to step up and produce some level of impact on the defensive pass rush. One of those players is first-round pick Jared Verse.

The board fell the right way for the Rams on draft night. With the first 14 selections all being awarded to players on the offensive side of the ball, defensive talent continued to drop. Instead of a player like Verse being selected in the top 10 or the top-15, he wound up right in the Rams’ lap at 19th overall.

There will be a lot of pressure in Verse’s rookie season to be the face of the Rams rush and make an immediate impact. The Rams are a team looking to capitalize on what is a two-year window and a big part of that is developing their young pass rusher. Verse is a player with a high floor coming into the NFL. As The Athletic’s Dane Brugler said, “His physical traits and competitive football temperament give him a high floor as an NFL starter.” Brugler compared Verse to Dante Fowler. Still, even with a high floor, rookie edge rushers also tend to take time for production to start showing on the stat sheet. Looking at edge rushers drafted between 15-32 since 2020:

• Will McDonald: 3 sacks, 12 pressures
• Myles Murphy: 3 sacks, 15 pressures
• Felix Anudike-Uzomah: 0.5 sacks, 11 pressures
• Jermaine Johnson: 2.5 sacks, 14 pressures
• George Karlaftis: 6 sacks, 49 pressures
• Jaelan Phillips: 6.5 sacks, 39 pressures
• Kwity Paye: 4 sacks, 39 pressures
• Payton Turner: 1 sack, 10 pressures
• Greg Rousseau: 4 sacks, 36 pressures
• Odafe Oweh: 5 sacks, 49 pressures
• Joe Tryon: 4 sacks, 33 pressures
• K’Lavon Chaisson: 1 sack, 29 pressures

An argument can be made that Verse shouldn’t have lasted past pick 15 and very likely could outperform past players selected within those slots. Still, the absence of Donald can’t be understated.

Since 2017, only two players not named Donald have accumulated 10 or more sacks in a single season on the Rams defense. Those two players are Dante Fowler and Leonard Floyd who each accomplished the feat once.

With ‘99’ on the roster, there was something called the “Aaron Donald effect”. For a player that was consistently double-teamed more than any other player in the NFL, it was obviously going to create opportunities for other players.

The best way to truly showcase this is with the ‘quality’ of sacks for the players playing alongside Donald. In 2021, Floyd had 9.5 sacks. According to Brandon Thorn’s “True Sack Rate” metric that is published on Trench Warfare, seven of Floyd’s nine sacks were considered “low quality”. A “low quality” sack is defined as, “a sack coming as a result of being unblocked or a scheme such as a twist or stunt, in which no special skill or move was required in order to record the sack.” Floyd had a strong 2020, but again, out of his 10.5 sacks, five were considered “low quality”. Even with Byron Young last year, 30 of his 41 pressures were considered “low quality pressures.”

That’s not to say those sacks or pressures were bad or the players didn’t earn them. It’s also not to say that Verse can’t or won’t have some success. There will be ebbs and flows or peaks and valleys which is the case for most rookie. However, the point here is simply to exemplify the type of effect that Donald had on the players around him and the opportunities he helped create. That’s not a benefit that Verse will have.

ESPN’s Seth Walder has a prospect sack model that forecasts the number of sacks a player will record over the first three seasons of their career. That number for Verse is 13 and an average of 4.3 sacks per season.

Aaron Schatz formerly of Football Outsiders has a similar model that projects out the first five years of a player’s career. In Schatz’s model, Verse is projected to have 24.4 sacks for an average of 4.9 sacks per season. On Verse, Schatz said,

“Verse had nine sacks in each of his two seasons after transferring to Florida State from Albany. He ranked fourth in this class in the Explosion Index based on combine drills — he posted a 4.58-second 40, a 35-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-7 broad jump. He’s held down a little in the projections by a relatively slow 3-cone time of 7.31 seconds.”

Schatz also compared Verse historically to Nick Perry and Joey Porter. After being drafted in the third round, Porter had two sacks as a rookie and that jumped to nine in year two. Nick Perry was a former first round pick for the Green Bay Packers and had only two sacks and four sacks in his first two seasons.

Verse wasn’t highly recruited coming out of high school and ended up at the University of Albany after running track and playing tight end at Central Columbia High School. After transitioning to defensive end, Verse had 10.5 sacks at Albany and transferred to Florida State. In his first season transferring from the FCS level to the ACC, Verse had nine sacks and won the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year award. He returned for a fifth season to complete his eligibility. Expected to take another step forward, Verse once again had nine sacks with the Seminoles in 2023, but helped lead one of the best defenses in the country.

Justin Melo of The Draft Network recently predicted who would be the NFL Rookie Sacks Leader. Melo had Verse as a worthy underdog in the conversation and said,

“The Rams are a defense in transition after losing Aaron Donald to retirement earlier this offseason...Jared Verse and his Florida State teammate Braden Fiske will join them on one of the most ascending defensive lines in the league. Getting consistent pressure off the edge was an issue for the Rams. Verse projects as an immediate workhorse starter opposite Young. Verse pairs first-step quickness with natural athleticism to be a consistent sack threat. Verse leaves Florida State after recording nine sacks apiece across his final two seasons. He’s going to receive the snap count required in Los Angeles to potentially lead all rookie defenders in sacks.”

The question here isn’t necessarily about opportunity. Verse will have plenty of opportunity to make an immediate impact. However, the underlying point here is that rookie edge rushers typically tend to take until year three until there impact is felt. That’s not always the case of course, but most of the time, year three is when edge players take that jump.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Rams utilize their young pass rushers. Byron Young hit a wall halfway through his rookie season. Michael Hoecht also brings some experience while Nick Hampton and Ochaun Mathis hopefully add some rotational ability. Add in interior pass rushers like Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske and from a schematic standpoint, the Rams should be able to generate some pressure. It could create a much more cohesive unit that generates pressure together instead of it all coming from one place.

Verse will likely have an impact throughout his rookie season. However, it’s also important to manage expectations and understand that Verse’s first year in the NFL is bound to come with the typical rookie ups and downs. The first-round pick will be one of the more talented edge rushers that the Rams have had under McVay and he should be a face of the defense for years to come.