Jared Verse burst onto the scene as the Rams’ first-round draft pick in 2024, winning the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year award. But he still remembers one offensive lineman who showed him the hard way that there’s a difference between the NFL and college football.
That player was 49ers left tackle Trent Williams, who physically overpowered Verse in a way he had never felt before when they locked up in the first home game of Verse’s career.
“It was against Trent Williams at SoFi Stadium,” Verse said on NFL Network. “He didn’t throw me to the ground or nothing like that. We were running a stunt game so I was going into the B-gap. They were trying to get outside of us, like a wide play. He got to my outside shoulder, and usually if somebody gets on my outside shoulder I’m able to just throw him off, move him out of the way, drop him to the ground. You can’t do that with Trent. I tried to move his hands and it was like moving cinder blocks. I move his hands — chopping, doing all this stuff to get his hands off. I literally said, like, ‘Trent, get off of me.’ Trent’s got a deep voice. He literally just starts laughing and was like, ‘You so funny, Verse.’ We’re watching film the next day. My coach was like, ‘Jared, you’ve got to get off this block.’ I’m like, ‘Coach, I tried, I don’t even know what you want me to tell you. I tried my hardest.’”
Williams has given a lot of rookies a rude awakening during his 16-year NFL career. The good news for Verse is that, now that he’s on the Browns, he won’t be seeing Williams this season.
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