Myles Garrett Calls Rams’ 27-7 Flop ‘Worst Version of Myself’ as Knee Betrays Him
MELBOURNE, Australia — Myles Garrett didn’t sugarcoat it. Not even a little.
After the Los Angeles Rams got stomped 27-7 by the San Francisco 49ers on Friday, the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year called his performance “the worst version of myself that I’ve put out there.” The reason? His knee wasn’t 100% healthy going into the game.
Not the Garrett the Rams traded for
Garrett missed most of training camp while dealing with what Rams coach Sean McVay called swelling in his knee. Garrett declined to say which knee is injured, but he wore a sleeve on his left leg during several practices.
“I’ve got to be better,” Garrett said. “I’ve got to find a way to recover and get back to the player I know I can be and I’ve shown that I’ve been before.”
Asked what his focus was going into Week 2, Garrett kept it blunt: “Getting healthy.”
“When I was out there, I was a little bit more focused on myself and trying to stay healthy than what they were doing, and that showed,” Garrett said. “I wasn’t who I needed to be for my team.”
This is a guy who set the single-season sack record with the Cleveland Browns last season, then got traded to Los Angeles this offseason. The Rams didn’t bring him in to be a spectator. But that’s basically what he was against San Francisco: no tackles, just three individual pressures, per ESPN tracking.
It was Garrett’s first game without a tackle since Week 11 of the 2024 season and just the fourth of his career, according to ESPN Research.
McVay: ‘To my knowledge, yeah’
Asked whether Garrett was 100% healthy, McVay said, “To my knowledge, yeah.” When McVay first acknowledged Garrett’s injury during training camp, the coach said Garrett told him he was “feeling about 85%” healthy.
The numbers back up the struggle. The Rams pressured 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy on just 7 of 36 dropbacks — 19%, their third-lowest rate since the beginning of last season.
Niners left tackle Trent Williams, however, said he “couldn’t tell” Garrett wasn’t 100% healthy because “he’s still really hard to block.”
“I mean, he’s one of those players where it’s just, you know, no matter what he’s going through, it’s still not an easy out for anybody,” Williams said.
San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan thought his offensive line “did an unbelievable job” against the Rams’ defense. He said the team did not tweak its plan for Garrett after learning defensive tackle Aaron Donald wasn’t playing.
“Not really,” Shanahan said. “You can’t really balance it out. We had to cheat the ends the same way, and it didn’t change any of the game plan.”
For Garrett and the Rams, the message is simple: get healthy, get right, or the nightmare opener will keep haunting them.