Do the Rams have the best young defensive line in the NFL?

With Jared Verse and Braden Fiske, the Rams have the best young DL in the NFL

When the Los Angeles Rams lost Aaron Donald in the offseason, the immediate thought was how they would even attempt to replace him. To put it simply, replacing Donald was always going to be an impossible task. With that said, they could try to get more players with the ability to cause disruption, bringing pressure from different areas.

For the most part, that is exactly what they’ve done and it started in the draft. In the first round, the Rams selected edge rusher Jared Verse who fell to them at 19. They then traded up in the second round to take his teammate Braden Fiske. The Rams would look to add Verse and Fiske to a promising young group while Byron Young and Kobie Turner continued to develop.

Of course, it wouldn’t look like a finished product right away. However, as Verse and Fiske developed during their rookie seasons while Turner and Young took a step forward in year two, the hope was that there would be flashes of what could be once the unit became a well-oiled machine.

For the most part, that’s what has happened. Verse and Fiske have shown flashes while Turner and Young have continued to develop. The finished product of what that could look like is very exciting.

Through the first eight weeks of the season, Jared Verse leads all rookies with 32 pressures according to Pro Football Focus. That’s the most for a rookie since Nick Bosa in 2019 who had 35. His 32 pressures are tied for the third-most in the PFF era behind Bosa and Chandler Jones. However, Jones had more in eight games while Verse has only played seven.

For a second consecutive season, the top of the top five rookies in pressures are Rams players. Fiske is behind Verse with 21 pressures and his first seven career games are actually pretty similar to Donald’s who had 14 pressures at this point during his rookie season.

That’s not to compare Fiske with Donald, but only that the Rams rookie has hit the ground running and is having an impact on games. There’s reason to be excited about what he can be as he develops and gets better.

Throughout the history of the Rams franchise, they have had some of the better defensive lines in the NFL. There were both iterations of the ‘Fearsome Foursome’. The original included Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier, and Lamar Lundy. There was then the reconstituted version of Jack Youngblood, Fred Dryer, Larry Brooks, and Merlin Olsen.

Fast forward to 2014 and the Rams had a defensive line that was built of four first round picks. The unit of Chris Long, Robert Quinn, Michael Brockers, and Aaron Donald were nicknamed the ‘Mob Squad’.

The current unit has yet to earn a nickname, but there is a lot of promise in that group. ESPN Analyst Dan Orlovsky went as far as to say that the Rams have the best young defensive line in the NFL. Said Orlovsky,

“That is the best young defensive line in football…These defensive linemen? Jared Verse looks like an absolute problem. And Kobie Turner? An absolute problem. And Byron Young and Hoecht? This defensive line is a very good unit when they are playing at full strength.”

The Rams current four of Verse, Turner, Fiske, and Young all rank in the top-50 in pressures. Only the Seattle Seahawks have more players inside the top-50. However, the Rams only have one player in that group over the age of 25 and have an average age of 24.5. Meanwhile, the Seahawks have two players aged 30 or higher in their five with an average age of 27.2.

When teams have an all-time great player, they often take for granted what that player is capable of on the field. It’s a reason why the Green Bay Packers never drafted a wide receiver in the first-round with Aaron Rodgers as quarterback. The expectation is that the all-time great player can compensate for deficiencies and make others around them better. During their Super Bowl run, the Rams traded for Von Miller to help during the playoff run, but that was the only top-level pass-rusher that Donald played with later in his career. It would have been fun to see Donald play next to Verse and Fiske this season.

However, without Donald in the picture, the Rams currently rank fourth in quarterback pressure rate and a lot of that is because of players like Verse, Fiske, and Young who all have a pressure rate over 10 percent and rank inside the top-30. With the investment in that group over the last two years, the Rams have a lot to look forward to in the coming seasons as their young defensive linemen and pass rushers continue to grow.