The box score rarely tells the full story of how a pass rusher performed in a given game.
Exhibit A: Jared Verse against the Bears in Week 4.
He finished the game with four tackles, one quarterback hit and one tackle for a loss, coming up empty in the sack department. Yet, it was one of the better performances by any pass rusher in the NFL all season.
For starters, he had a 1.5 sacks taken away from him because of defensive holding penalties by Kamren Curl and Tre’Davious White on two separate plays within a minute of each other. The first was with Verse rushing over the center as a stand-up linebacker, a unique package deployed by Chris Shula. It wasn’t a quick win by Verse, but he did push Coleman Shelton into Caleb Williams, disrupting the play a bit following a shotgun snap.
The second was a good rush by Verse where he didn’t give up on the play despite being blocked initially, collapsing the pocket and meeting Byron Young at the quarterback for the half-sack.
Had the Rams not been called for penalties on those two plays, Verse would’ve added a sack and a half to his stat line, as well as two more tackles.
Pro Football Focus provided even greater context on Verse’s dominant performance. According to PFF, Verse had a pass-rush win rate of 50%, which means he beat his blocker on half of his pass-rush reps. That number is tied for the best of any player in the NFL so far this season, matching Dexter Lawrence of the Giants.
Jared Verse – 50.0% pass rush win rate vs the Bears 💪
The highest mark in a single game this season (Tied with Dexter Lawrence) pic.twitter.com/6hmDIYwgVw
— PFF LA Rams (@PFF_Rams) September 30, 2024
It’s Verse’s combination of speed and power that make him such an outstanding young player for the Rams. He showed his raw power on this rep where he walked Braxton Jones backwards with a bull rush before ripping through and going to the outside for the pressure.
Next Gen Stats credited Verse with five total pressures in the game, one more than PFF gave him. Even more impressively, four of those pressures came in under 2.5 seconds, so he was getting to the quarterback quickly.
According to Next Gen Stats, those four quick pressures are the most by any rookie so far this season.
This, for example, was one of those four quick pressures. It turned into a 27-yard gain by D’Andre Swift, but Verse nearly got home for the sack before Williams released it.
Through four games, Verse ranks 16th among all NFL defenders with 17 total pressures, only eight off the lead set by Aidan Hutchinson (through three games). When it comes to rookies, his 17 pressures are four more than any other first-year player.
We know Verse can generate pressure on opposing quarterbacks, but he needs to figure out how to finish plays now – something he’s well aware of.
“It’s play fast, react fast,” Verse said in a recent interview with TheRams.com. “So I’m gonna go as hard as I can, go after it as fast as I can, I’m not gonna slow down, but that split second before I make contact with the person, I have to slow down, I have to level my feet out, get my two feet in the ground, slow myself down a little bit and be like, ‘Okay, what levels do I have on him? Do I have his back hip? Let me aim for his back hip.’ Like, what do I have?”
After missing three more tackles against the Bears, Verse now has 11 on the year. That’s the most in the NFL, and at least a few of them could’ve resulted in sacks.
He’s still the favorite to win Defensive Rookie of the Year, but Verse hasn’t come close to reaching his ceiling from a production standpoint.