Call it Cleveland Browns injury news with a twist. The thing Jared Verse has been nursing this fall isn't in his knee, even though he's played through one. It's between his ears, and on Thursday he said so out loud.
Verse, the centerpiece the Browns got back when they sent Myles Garrett to the Rams in June, told reporters in Berea that he recently sat down with the team's psychiatrist to work through what he called "a mental block." The headline number is stark: through his first nine games in Cleveland, Verse has not registered a single sack. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, he's one of only three players in the league with at least 200 pass rush snaps and nothing to show for it in the sack column.
That's not a noisy endzone stat, either. Verse's pressure rate of 3.4 percent ranks 180th out of 199 qualifying players, and his edge pass rush win rate of 11.2 percent sits 55th out of 56. Two years ago, as a rookie with the Rams, his 99 pressures trailed only Micah Parsons and the very player he was traded for. The drop isn't subtle, and Verse isn't pretending it is.
Why Hasn't Jared Verse Recorded a Sack With the Browns?
"I haven't played well at all this season," Verse said, which is about as blunt as a professional athlete gets about himself in front of a microphone. He insisted the issue isn't conditioning or health. "I train my body every day to push myself to the limits of what I'm physically capable of doing," he said. "So I don't think it was any issue with my body, but I think I've taken the steps to figure out what it was after meeting with a couple people and everything like that."
Part of that figuring-out is scheme. Verse spent his first two NFL seasons as an outside linebacker in the Rams' attack-style front, where he racked up 12 sacks and five forced fumbles across two years. Cleveland plays him with his hand in the dirt as a defensive end in a different system, under a different coordinator, and that's not a small adjustment for a player who'd only ever rushed the passer one way.
Head coach Todd Monken, for his part, isn't ready to sound an alarm. "I think it's too early to say anything," Monken said last week. "I love the way Jared works every day since he's come here... I think it's just a matter of adapting to our style... And it's unfair to compare him to Myles Garrett. I think that's always been unfair. Myles is in an elite category of his own." Monken's larger point was about game state: get the Browns ahead on the scoreboard, force opponents into obvious passing downs, and the sacks follow. The Browns enter this stretch having dropped their last two.
What the Myles Garrett Trade Was Supposed to Bring
It's worth remembering what Cleveland gave up to get Verse in the first place. Garrett had just set the NFL's single-season sack record with 23 in 2025, breaking the mark Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt had shared. Trading a two-time Defensive Player of the Year in his prime, even for a 25-year-old, cost-controlled Pro Bowler and three future draft picks, was the kind of deal that forces a front office to defend itself. Browns GM Andrew Berry said at the time the trade wouldn't have happened without Verse attached, calling him a "huge part of this return."
Garrett's side of the ledger has its own wrinkle. He missed seven games this season recovering from knee surgery before returning in Week 9, and he didn't look rusty: three sacks and a forced fumble in a win over Washington that pushed the Rams to 5-4.
| Player | Team/Season | Sacks | Pressures / Pressure Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jared Verse | Rams, 2024-25 (2 seasons) | 12 | 99 pressures (trailed only Parsons, Garrett) |
| Jared Verse | Browns, 2026 (9 games) | 0 | 3.4% rate, 180th of 199 |
| Myles Garrett | Browns, 2025 | 23 (NFL record) | n/a |
| Myles Garrett | Rams, Week 9 return 2026 | 3 | n/a |
Seen next to each other like that, the gap is the whole story in one table. It's also why the Browns' front office is watching this closer than almost any other storyline on the roster.
Is a Mental Block Real, and Can It Be Fixed?
It is, and the league has started treating it like any other injury. Every NFL team now keeps behavioral health clinicians on staff and offers players around-the-clock access, a shift that accelerated after Damar Hamlin's collapse in 2023 pushed the league to be louder about mental health resources it already had. Verse going to see the team psychiatrist isn't a crisis story. It's a player using the tools that are sitting right down the hall.
There's precedent for it working. checked the almanac: in 2021, 49ers linebacker Fred Warner went through a slump of his own after signing a big extension, a stretch he later called the lowest of his career, and reached out to a sports psychologist to work through it. He came out the other side with three straight seasons of 130-plus tackles. A mental block isn't a career sentence. It's a problem, and problems get worked on.
What Comes Next for Verse and the Browns
Cleveland hosts the Texans on Sunday, November 15, and that's the next real data point. Not because one game fixes a nine-game drought, but because Monken's theory, get ahead, make teams one-dimensional, needs game script to cooperate before anyone can test it. Watch Verse's pressure rate over the next few weeks more than the sack total itself; pressures without sacks is still progress, and it's usually what shows up first when a pass rusher starts trusting his eyes again instead of overthinking the snap count.
The Browns traded a legend to get this player. They're not giving up on him nine games in, and on Thursday, neither did he.