Jared Verse may not want the sack conversation, but it’s coming anyway.
That’s the burden that follows the Browns’ new No. 1 defensive end on the right side, and it was sitting right there on the podium Wednesday. Verse tried to steer the focus somewhere else, making it clear he doesn’t want to be measured the same way Myles Garrett was in Cleveland.
Garrett’s Browns run was built on sack totals, records and major honors like NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Verse wants no part of that lane.
“I don't care about sacks,” said Verse, who has yet to record his first sack as a Brown. “At the end of the season, yeah, you can tally up how good someone played because of: ‘Oh he had this many sacks.
He had that many sacks.’ That's never been a testament to the way I play.
“I try to be the best version of me that elevates my teammates around me. You know, if my teammates are getting sacks, they’re producing, and I’m causing pressure to make the quarterback throw a pick or do this, do that - if it’s just elevating our defense that’s all that matters to me. A sack is one play out of 60 that you get a game, what are you doing the other 59 plays?”
That message lands differently when the numbers haven’t shown up yet. Through two games with Cleveland, Verse hasn’t delivered the kind of impact fans were expecting, or the one he described on Wednesday.
Per SumerSports, his pressure percentage is sitting at a career-low 4.3 percent this season. Pro Football Focus has him with just two stuffs and only average marks against the run.
The bigger issue for Browns fans is obvious: they expected more than talk, and they’re still waiting for the production to match the billing.
No one was asking Verse to replace Garrett’s monster sack numbers overnight. Garrett piled up 13 sacks during a four-game stretch last season and set the NFL’s single-season record in 2025.
Verse, meanwhile, is 36 games into his career and has 12 total sacks. The gap between the two is exactly why the expectations around Verse feel so heavy now.
Even so, Verse kept pushing back on the idea that sacks are the only thing that matters. He said the pressure itself can change an offense, but he also argued that defensive line play has to be judged by more than one stat.
“I think [sacks] are very important in the fact that they can mess up an offense's head,” Verse said. “They can push people back, and obviously I want as many sacks as possible.
Every defensive lineman does. But I think there's a lot more things that contribute to the factor of if you're a good defensive lineman or if you're a top-tier player or not besides the fact of you putting up a high sack number."
Verse’s tone told part of the story too. He nearly left the podium after the sack question, then stayed when a reporter asked about Carolina Panthers rookie Monroe Freeling and hung around for several more questions, including a follow-up on the same topic. He’s always been the kind of player who brings no fluff and no theater, which is part of why he fit so naturally with head coach Todd Monken and the culture he wants in Cleveland.
Still, Wednesday didn’t look like the same Verse Browns fans saw when he first arrived in Berea in early June. He had his game face on, and it was hard not to read some frustration into the way he handled the questions.
There is logic in what Verse is saying. He pointed to run defense, edge setting and the idea that stopping the run is too often overlooked.
That’s not a throwaway point in Cleveland, either. The Browns were 17th against the run in 2025 and 21st in 2024, and Garrett’s all-out approach up the field sometimes left them vulnerable.
“So many people focus too much on the ability to get to the quarterback and to get these sacks, hits, quarterback pressures, and all that,” Verse said. “I think the ability to stop the run is a very underrated characteristic of a lot of defensive linemen.”
Verse had been among the NFL’s top edge defenders against the run last season, per ESPN’s run stop win rate, though he’s since dropped out of the top 10 after two games in 2026. That doesn’t make the situation hopeless.
It does make it early. He’s only entering his third game in a new system, and at 25, he’s still building out the full pass-rush package.
Week 2 in Tampa Bay, where he went against three-time All-Pro Tristan Wirfs, was hardly a soft landing spot.
But the Browns need more. Verse knows it, and Wednesday made that pretty clear. He may not care about sacks in the abstract, but getting his first one Sunday in the home opener against the Dawg Pound would make life a whole lot easier for everybody - especially Verse himself.
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