Myles Garrett spent last season ranked eighth on the NFL Top 100. This week his peers voted him first, and the six month gap between those two rankings tells you almost everything about how fast the Rams defense has been rebuilt around him.
The trade that changed everything
Garrett arrived in Los Angeles in early June, acquired from Cleveland in a trade that immediately reshaped how the league viewed the Rams defense. The move did more than add a pass rusher. Many around the team believe the trade played a direct role in convincing Aaron Donald to come out of retirement, giving Los Angeles two of the most feared interior and edge threats of the last decade on the same defensive line at the same time. On paper, that pairing alone was enough to make analysts start talking about the Rams differently before a single regular season snap had been played.
From eighth to first
Garrett’s climb up the Top 100 did not happen by accident. He set the NFL’s single season sack record last year with 23, added 33 tackles for loss, and won his second Defensive Player of the Year award for the performance. This marks his third straight year inside the Top 10, but the jump to number one is new, and it came at the direct expense of players like Atlanta running back Bijan Robinson and Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, who finished third and second. Being voted ahead of a quarterback of Allen’s caliber, by the players who lined up against both of them, says as much about how the league sees Garrett right now as the ranking number itself does.
The numbers behind the vote
Garrett posted a 21% pass rush win rate last season, according to ESPN analytics, a figure worth measuring against Donald’s own 20% mark during his final season in 2023. Placing a nearly identical number next to two different players three years apart shows how rare Garrett’s level of disruption actually is, and it helps explain why his peers were willing to rank him above skill position stars with flashier statistics.
A defense with six names on the list
Garrett is not the only reason the Rams defense looks different this year. General manager Les Snead used the offseason to fix what was the roster’s clear weak spot, adding cornerbacks Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson to overhaul a secondary that struggled in 2025. The result shows up across the full Top 100, where six Rams made the list overall, including quarterback Matthew Stafford at four, receiver Puka Nacua at seven, receiver Davante Adams at 53, linebacker Byron Young at 84 and running back Kyren Williams at 89. Six players from one roster on a single peer voted list is the kind of depth that gets a team labeled a favorite before the schedule even starts mattering.
What has to happen next
None of this erases how last season actually ended. Seattle eliminated the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, and every move made since then, from the Garrett trade to the secondary overhaul to Donald’s return, reads like a direct response to that loss. The roster on paper looks like the best version of this Rams team in years. Whether Garrett’s number one ranking becomes a footnote to a Super Bowl run or just the high point of a season that stalls again in January is the only question that actually matters now, and it will not get answered until the games that count begin.
