Two months and four days into the negotiation, finally, Les Snead punched the message into his iPhone: “Alright, send the trade papers over.” And the Rams’ GM then searched for a GIF—landing on Hulk Hogan and The Rock, locked in a staredown—to send to his counterpart, Browns GM Andrew Berry.
“Me and you negotiating the kickbacks,” Snead added, via text.
Berry responded with a crying-laughing emoji, as he literally laughed out loud in his office.
The wrestling over compensation was officially over, and, after all that time working together, and for their teams’ best interests, both Berry and Snead figured they’d found a common ground where a proverbial referee could raise both guys’ arms in victory.
It was Friday afternoon, and there were still three days left until the June 1 finish line, so nothing was official or formalized yet. And by design, only one small circle of people in Cleveland and another small circle of people in Los Angeles knew the seismic trade terms that had, once and for all, been agreed to. So the possibility that something, small or large, could go wrong in the interim was still out there.
But by then, so, too, was the reality of the situation.
Myles Garrett, perhaps the greatest defensive player of his generation, a seven-time All-Pro (five first-team selections) and new holder of the all-time single-season sack record was being traded. The Browns wound up getting a 25-year-old at Garrett’s position, Jared Verse, in addition to a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick and a 2029 third-round pick. The Rams relented on the aforementioned kickbacks and on giving up Verse. The Browns’ initial pie-in-the-sky hope that maybe they’d wind up with Verse and two first-rounders had long since evaporated.
Maybe for both Snead and Berry, being able to joke through the moment eased the nerves or distracted from the enormity of what they’d just pulled off—a trade that was months in the making, and almost without precedent in its terms and its magnitude.
“It’s emotionally hard, definitely,” Berry said Tuesday morning. “You ask yourself when the deal gets to a certain point, Is it really the best thing at that point just to hold onto him, like we’d intended and like we said publicly many times, because it actually feels emotionally right? You never like to see cornerstone, homegrown players leave your organization, but strategically, it just made a ton of sense with the caliber of player that we were getting back, having a guy who’s a top-level player at a premium spot, and with the additional resources.
“That part was pretty straightforward. But the emotional part was difficult.”
And, as it stood last Friday, the result of weeks of grappling with a franchise-shaping decision, and the guy, whom Berry really liked, on the other end of that text.
One thing that insulated both GMs in the moment is that neither has ever been skittish about going big-game hunting on trades—and that experience was vital to keeping this particular trade on the tracks for such an extended period of time.
Snead has so much experience, in fact, that it’s become part of his, and his team’s, identity.
His first big move as a GM came less than two months after he landed the Rams’ job, when he dealt the second pick in the draft to Washington, a selection that would become Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback Robert Griffin III, for three first-rounders. After the team moved to Los Angeles, and he was paired with Sean McVay, he had more measured swings on players such as Sammy Watkins, Marcus Peters and Brandin Cooks preceding massive strikes for Jalen Ramsey and Matthew Stafford, two of the best players on his Super Bowl–winning roster.
“We use the word efficacy,” he says. “And by definition, it’s evidence that you can do something. You have evidence. Well, we have evidence that we can contend. So at that point in time, it gets into a macro level. Sean will talk about it, Hey, let’s go live then. Let’s live—capitalize L-I-V-E. … Let’s live. Let’s swing. We have a model. Don’t be scared. And at the end of the day, I think you need the efficacy to do that.”
The way last season ended reaffirmed the Rams had efficacy to start swinging again.
They fell four points short of making the Super Bowl, losing against a Seahawks team that bludgeoned the AFC champion Patriots two weeks later, and that NFC title game would’ve been played in Inglewood had it not been for the fluky Zach Charbonnet two-point conversion in the Seahawks-Rams showdown in December. They were that close, they had two first-round picks, and McVay, Snead and the brass agreed, as they met after taking a week or so to decompress, that the defense in general, and the corner spot in particular, needed to improve.
A week before the start of the league year, the Rams attacked the issue aggressively, sending the lower of their two first-rounders (along with fifth- and sixth-round picks and a 2027 third-rounder) to the Chiefs for a 25-year-old, two-time All-Pro corner in Trent McDuffie. Seven days later, they poached Kansas City’s other young starting corner, Jaylen Watson, signing the long, rangy 27-year-old to a three-year, $51 million deal.
And at that point, they were moving forward with a bolstered secondary, and fearsome young front led by Verse, Kobie Turner, Byron Young and Braden Fiske.
Then, on March 25, after going down the road and turning away from an A.J. Brown trade, Snead saw a report that the Browns had moved the trigger date on Garrett’s $29.2 million option bonus from late March to September. He took the story to Rams cap manager Matthew Shearin. Shearin, of course, couldn’t clarify the Browns’ intention, but he did confirm that it’s what a team would do if a trade were coming—because it would leave open the chance to shift that part of the contract to another team.
So Snead then huddled with McVay and COO Tony Pastoors about making a call to the Browns, and the three went to team president Kevin Demoff to start running the idea of adding another massive contract after the McDuffie and Watson expenditures up the flagpole to owners Stan and Josh Kroenke, who, along with Demoff, were approaching a critical point in the seasons of the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets and Arsenal F.C.
The Rams had made an effort to acquire Garrett as far back as 2022. | Joseph Maiorana-Imagn Images
This wouldn’t be the first time Snead would call Berry about Garrett.
Ahead of the 2022 trade deadline, the Rams were looking for pass-rush help, feeling the loss of 2021 deadline acquisition Von Miller. They’d called the Panthers, and after going way down the road on a Christian McCaffrey trade, before the 49ers landed him, they offered two first-round picks for Brian Burns. They made a similar offer to the Raiders for Maxx Crosby. And they went further with the Browns—a package that topped what they’d traded for Ramsey (two firsts and a fourth) for Garrett.
At the time, Berry had no interest in dealing Garrett, but the deal was only more evidence of a key thing that the Browns’ GM already knew: If the Rams called, they weren’t screwing around, or fishing, or making sure they weren’t missing out on something.
Snead would come with an offer, and he could be trusted that the proposal wouldn’t go public.
So when the Rams’ GM called in late March, after meeting with Pastoors and McVay, Berry knew he wouldn’t take the phone call and leave it empty-handed. Indeed, Snead arrived armed with an offer topping what he’d put in front of the Browns in 2022, something that was never going to get the job done, but was enough to signal the Rams’ seriousness. It was also uniquely Rams-ian. For all the inquiries he’d gotten on Garrett over the years, it was just the fourth hard offer a team had ever made, two of which now came from Los Angeles.
To prepare for such a circumstance, Berry, over the years, had drummed up a three-point framework of what a deal for Garrett would have to look like. First, it would have to serve the Browns in the short- and long-term. Second, it would have to include a young star at a premium position on a cost-controlled contract. Third, there’d have to be premium draft capital coming with the player.
So, while Los Angeles’s initial offer fell short right off the bat, because it was made up purely of draft capital, Berry and Snead, who’d become friendly with each other over the years as guys who weren’t afraid to make big deals, resolved to keep talking. Snead said the Rams would be ready to deal whenever. Berry said the Browns preferred to wait until after June 1, though there was some flexibility on that. They talked a handful of times before the draft.
It was implicitly understood that their talks couldn’t leak out, so both sides kept their circles tight. Snead and McVay would eventually bring assistant GM John McKay, analytics chief Nicole Blake and defensive coordinator Chris Shula into the mix. And Berry worked with a few confidants in-house, and then two key guys externally.
Berry is part of a sort of think tank/buddy group of executives across sports that includes St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti and Pittsburgh Penguins GM Kyle Dubas. And both Bloom and Presti had been in Berry’s shoes.
Presti affirmed Berry’s resolve to prioritize getting a player and not just picks, taking him through the Paul George trade of 2019. Most folks on the outside focused on the four first-round picks and two additional first-round pick swaps Presti landed in the deal. But the reality was that OKC viewed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a player they were higher on than most, as the key. SGA has since won two MVPs and was the best player on a title team. (And SI’s 2025 Sportsperson of the Year.)
Meanwhile, Bloom anchored that resolve with his story of trading Mookie Betts, when he was running the Red Sox, to the Dodgers in 2020. Dealing a player who was Captain America from a character standpoint, Bloom emphasized the importance of prioritizing finding a similar makeup in the players that he had coming back in the blockbuster.
Those two pearls of wisdom would inform Berry’s next ask.
Sean McVay’s squad will have an upgraded secondary in 2026. And the team’s free agency and draft plans made it easier to swing for Garrett. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
The Rams have never approached draft picks as separate, in any way, from the rest of their team-building philosophy—and the runup to this April’s draft created a stark example of it in how the medicals of Tennessee CB Jermod McCoy affected how they’d deploy their first-rounders, the first of which they landed in Atlanta’s move up for James Pearce Jr. last year.
The class had two guys at that position of need for the Rams with the perceived ceiling to become No. 1 corners. And when McCoy’s knee condition took him out of play in the first round, leaving LSU’s Mansoor Delane as the clear-cut top guy, it became apparent to Snead, Pastoors and McVay that they had a better shot to address the position on the veteran market, so they did that with the acquisitions of McDuffie and Watson.
Similarly, when meeting to discuss Alabama QB Ty Simpson just before the draft, and among the small circle of folks in the know, the Rams started discussing how taking Simpson that high in the first round might affect their pursuit of Garrett or another big fish. And in what might have seemed counterintuitive to some at the time, they agreed that it’d actually help them justify taking such a massive swing.
With the draft looming, and the Browns wanting to wait until June 1 on Garrett, there was no chance of adding 2026 draft picks to the deal to begin with. So by using that capital on Simpson, they’d be freed up to spend picks from the 2027, ’28 and ’29 drafts to land the Browns’ superstar, not having to worry about needing that capital to find Stafford’s eventual successor.
The Rams took Simpson with the No. 13 pick, and about a week after the draft, Snead and Berry reconnected, and Verse entered the conversation, after Cleveland had dug deep on his tape and discreetly asked his ex-coaches and teammates about his makeup.
Berry went on vacation the week of May 12, and talks resumed the week after that, with the Browns digging their heels in and communicating to the Rams that Verse would have to be a part of any trade. The Rams resisted. The Browns stood firm. They told Los Angeles that without Verse—a star who wasn’t even extension-eligible yet, had two years and a fifth-year option left on his rookie deal, and was an every-down force that would come in and play the position that Garrett would vacate—there would be no deal.
And as they kept working the deal, the Browns assigned dollar values to both sides of the trade, to try to achieve the right balance. In doing so, they valued Verse as a player who would fetch, bare minimum, a first- and third-round pick in a trade, more likely a first and a second, and, if there was an aggressive bidding war, a max of two first-rounders.
Snead & Co., for their part, never stopped trying to remove Verse from the deal. But to move things forward, they started discussing what a deal with their young star in it would look like. That week, the Rams offered Verse, a first-round pick and a second-rounder.
The sides weren’t there yet, and that wasn’t quite enough for Cleveland.
But it was close enough that the idea of a June 1 deal was becoming more and more realistic, if not a likelihood. It was time to call Garrett.
It was very important to Andrew Berry that the Browns maintain a great relationship with Garrett as he leaves for a new organization. | Jeff Lange / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Garrett’s exit meetings with the Browns aren’t the same as with other players.
The 30-year-old is a limited partner and brand ambassador for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and has shown an interest in investing similarly in a European soccer club. He, very clearly, has an understanding of, and a passion for, the business end of sports. So much so that, by the end of last year, Garrett would meet with Berry on Tuesdays, and Berry would take him through roster planning, to show him how teams are really put together.
As such, his meeting at the end of the 2025 season with Berry, as it is every year, dove into the team’s plans for the year ahead. In it, Berry laid out what free agency and the draft would look like, how the Browns planned to address their holes, and, this year, how they’d attack their coaching search. This year, unlike last year, when Garrett asked to be traded, it was full speed ahead for both the team and its star player.
And because the team had that sort of relationship with Garrett, handling the end of their partnership was always going to be a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Garrett was overseas vacationing with his girlfriend, Olympian Chloe Kim, in Japan and Korea until May 26, the day after Memorial Day, with plans to do a one-day stopover, coincidentally, in Los Angeles, before returning home to Dallas, where he’d train for a bit before joining back up with his teammates in Cleveland.
Berry called Garrett soon after he returned to the States, to inform him that they’d been talking about a trade, that the other team was the Rams, and that there was a chance that they’d reach an agreement with L.A. on a deal that made sense for everyone.
Soon thereafter, the Rams agreed to add their 2029 third-round pick to the deal, while still fighting for the Browns to kick them back a pick or two. Garrett was told it was getting closer. And then, on Friday, as the sides drew up the trade papers, the Browns invited Garrett, still in Dallas, to fly to Ohio so everyone could say their goodbyes.
On Saturday, around 10 a.m., Garrett arrived at Jimmy Haslam’s Northeast Ohio residence.
There, the Haslams, Berry and Garrett reminisced and traded stories, and the Browns’ owner fired off some of his trademark, Southern-spun one-liners. Over the hour or so they spent, they talked about L.A. and Cleveland, and the main thing, for the Browns’ folks, was making sure that their final time together would be left the right way.
“It’s incredibly important that Myles knows we will welcome him back to the organization with open arms when his career is over. He’ll retire a Brown. He’ll go into Canton a Brown,” Berry said. “That’s a lifelong relationship. And that doesn’t change just because he’s wearing a different uniform. He’s a foundational player for our organization.”
Or, now, he was.
The Rams tried to the last minute to keep Jared Verse, but he was an important part of the deal. | Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
On the Friday that the Browns sent the draft papers, McVay and Snead sat down and went through some old notes, doing some “whiteboarding,” as the GM calls it, of ideas.
It wasn’t football-specific. More so, the two were going through some wisdom they’d gained from people they admired over the years that could apply to this situation. One such person was Jim Collins—who authored the business book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t.
For obvious reasons, the concept hit at the heart of what they were about to do.
But the same as it was with Garrett for the Browns, the Rams were hypersensitive to the human element of the trade. McVay was adamant to those in the know, throughout, that if Verse was going to be a part of the trade, he should hear it from his head coach first. And until the end, even after the paperwork came over, the Rams were looking for creative ways to remove their 25-year-old stud rusher from the deal.
Reality set in over the weekend that it wasn’t happening, so McVay turned his focus to ensuring Verse learned about the trade the right way, telling the Browns that for the deal to go through, they’d have to keep it quiet long enough for that conversation to happen.
Cleveland quickly agreed, and since the Browns had their charity golf tournament Monday, the sides planned to make the trade public around 8 p.m. ET, as the Rams jumped in on talks with Garrett’s agent Nicole Lynn to adjust his contract in a way that would ease their funding-rule burden and, to avoid a Crosby situation, the trainers got on a call to discuss Garrett’s and Verse’s medical information.
But early in the day on Monday, buzz on the internet about a Garrett deal got to a point where McVay, with his team in for the offseason program, got uneasy about the news holding. He told Snead and Pastoors that he needed to meet with Verse earlier than they’d planned. So in the 9 a.m. hour in L.A.—noon on the golf course in Ohio—the Rams called the Browns and said that they wanted to respect the Haslams’s wishes, but McVay had to tell Verse.
So at 9:45 a.m., after position meetings broke and before a 10 a.m. team meeting, McVay asked Verse to come into his office to meet with him and Snead. There, they delivered the news. Verse handled it in a way, in Snead’s words, that a dad would want his son to do it, with just one request—that he be able to tell his teammates in the 10 a.m. meeting.
“Hell, yeah, you can,” McVay said.
Meanwhile, as that was going down, Pastoors emailed final paperwork back to Browns VP of football administration Chris Cooper with the note, “There’s a pick missing here,” referencing the kickbacks the Rams had pressed for, and relented on. Cooper showed the email to Berry, who was preparing for the news to become public, at which point he’d go meet with the Cleveland media. He panicked for a second. Then Snead called.
“Yeah,” Snead said, “probably some bad timing on that joke.”
During the final weeks of talks, Snead was watching the Spurs in the NBA playoffs, seeing the prodigious Victor Wembanyama going up against Gilgeous-Alexander, and thought to himself, as a fan of pro basketball, how the trade he was working on was far more NBA-like than it was NFL-like.
That only further cemented in his mind how rare of an opportunity it was for the Rams.
On Monday, he called Garrett, didn’t get him, and then texted him, telling him not to worry about calling back, but that McVay would be calling shortly. He shared McVay’s number, and then started a text chain with Lynn and Garrett, to work through some of the particulars on his arrival and first few days.
Snead then woke up early Tuesday, earlier than normal, and even though he was a little less rested than usual, his wife, Kara, told him he looked like he had the weight of the world off his shoulders—which made sense because, finally, it was June 2.
And somehow, he and Berry kept the whole thing quiet enough, and on the tracks for long enough, for that day to come and everyone to feel good, sleep be damned, on the other side. The trust they’d built had sustained.
“I don’t even know if I can put it in words, how monumental that was, probably for both of us,” Snead said. “To be able to work through something that was going to take longer than normal based on starting discussing this in March and they prefer to do it post-June 1. And so to be able to have those types of conversations … it was just a blueprint, and if it would’ve gotten out, especially this time of year, why wouldn’t everybody who discusses NFL football on a daily basis talk about the possibility of Myles Garrett to the Rams?
“We were trying to avoid that at all costs because at that point, it was just a possibility. And what if it didn’t happen?”
Thankfully, it was a problem he wouldn’t have to worry about. And that left the Rams to move to the hard part: making the most of everything that’ll come with this.
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