HERMOSA BEACH — Fate can be funny sometimes. When Jared Verse was an unknown outside linebacker at Albany, his head coach was Greg Gattuso, who had been the defensive line coach at Pittsburgh during the freshman season of one Aaron Donald.
Gattuso arranged a Zoom call between Donald and his Albany defensive linemen, and Verse had the opportunity to pick the brain of the Rams’ dominant defensive tackle.
“The biggest thing I took away from the questions I asked him was he said you don’t need a huge arsenal of moves,” Verse said. “If you have a couple good moves and you execute them to the highest level of your ability, you will destroy everyone. And aggression beats everything.”
As fate would have it, Verse was taken by the Rams with the No. 19 pick in the NFL draft on Thursday, the first piece of the puzzle as the Rams try to move forward following Donald’s retirement in March.
“It is a dream come true,” Verse told reporters over Zoom shortly after his selection. “As you go through the whole process and hear them call my name with that ‘Los Angeles Rams’ attached to it, woop, dream come true.”
Verse, 23, fits the physical mold of an edge rusher. He’s 6-foot-4 with a 79.5-inch wingspan. He had nine tackles in each of his two seasons at Florida State, both of which earned him AP second-team All-American honors. He is known for his strength and persistence on the edge, leading to 61 pressures in those two years.
“You can tell he cares about football, he has fun playing football, and oh, by the way, he’s pretty disruptive, violent,” Rams general manager Les Snead said. “You think ‘defense’, the way he plays is next to the word in the dictionary.”
Verse spoke to the Rams throughout the draft process, including as recently as last week, though the Rams opted not to bring him to L.A. for a workout lest they tip their hand about their interest in Verse. The team’s brain trust, including head coach Sean McVay and defensive coordinator Chris Shula, quizzed him about certain games and plays, and showed him their defense to see what he could observe.
The new Ram said he liked the energy from the coaches, and that he saw a clear philosophical match with his new team.
“I feel like it’s meant for dawgs,” he explained. “You can’t be scared or timid in this defense. You have to be ready to hit somebody, you have to be ready to get after it and that’s my play style for sure.”
He’ll play opposite Byron Young as an outside linebacker for the Rams. McVay noted that Verse can move inside and line up over a guard, next to defensive tackle Kobie Turner, who was the first player to reach out and offer any assistance to Verse after he was picked by the Rams.
And like Young and Turner, Verse began his career below the top levels of college football. He played three seasons at Albany at the FCS level before earning his opportunity at Florida State.
“There’s a lot of players who get stuff just kind of handed to them,” Verse said. “But me, I had to be hungry. I didn’t get anything at Albany. I used to have to work at Amazon, DoorDash, I used to do all those things to make ends meet. So it makes you hungry being in the position now where I get to speak to all of y’all today, fly out there real soon and get the work in, it makes everything worth it.”
Verse was the third edge rusher selected on Thursday. A run on six quarterbacks and a record 14 consecutive offensive players selected to open the draft pushed defensive players down to the Rams.
The team had explored moving up or down in the draft, but ultimately stayed put to make its first first-round selection since Jared Goff in 2016.
“This was one of the things that we had really hoped was going to work out,” McVay said. “There were some other scenarios that we had really talked through just based on 31 other teams having say. But to address an outside edge rusher that can affect and influence the game … you do want to continue to build up front, continue to be able to do those types of things and Jared represented an opportunity to do that.”
The Rams have been consistent about not trying to replace Donald with one player since his retirement. And Verse understands the magnitude of the hole the future Hall of Famer left behind.
But he also feels a responsibility, especially as the Rams’ first first-round selection of the McVay era, and will begin his work to contribute to his new defense after flying from his draft party with family in Phoenix to Los Angeles on Friday.
“It’s time to work. It’s time to show them they didn’t make a mistake, it’s time to show them what we do. I’m excited for it,” Verse said. “But to be able to be in a position where they expect to come in there and be able to fill that role, that’s something that I’m ready for. Pressure makes diamonds and I love pressure.”