The Denver Broncos already faced an absolute gauntlet in the first six weeks of the 2026 NFL season, a stretch of games that includes a matchup against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 3.
The Broncos will be hosting the Rams on Sunday Night Football, and now, they're going to be playing host to the newest member of the team: Myles Garrett.
The Rams have struck a blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Browns to acquire the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, 7-time All-Pro, and the player who just set the NFL's all-time record in sacks. This is just a couple of months after the Rams already added Trent McDuffie to their secondary, which seemingly addressed their only major weakness ahead of 2026.
When the Broncos host the Rams, they're now going to have to deal with the NFL's best pass rusher.
Denver Broncos will face off against Myles Garrett on his new team in Week 3 matchup vs. Rams
The trade between the Rams and Browns was an absolutely outrageous deal, and it couldn't be any other way with a player of this caliber changing teams.
The Rams get Garrett, but the Browns get pass rusher Jared Verse, a 1st-round pick in 2027, a 2nd-round pick in 2028, and a 3rd-round pick in 2029. The Rams are taking a little bit of a page out of the Los Angeles Dodgers' playbook and deferring some of the payment into the future.
The Broncos' pass protection is obviously going to be put to the test right away this season. Garrett has just 4 QB hits and 1.5 sacks in his 5 career games against the Broncos, and thankfully for Denver, Garett Bolles is playing the best football of his career as of the end of the 2025 season.
Not only that, but Bo Nix is arguably the best quarterback in the NFL at avoiding being sacked. The Broncos will have a plan for how to offset the impact of a player like Garrett, but that is never easy. Sean Payton has a specific approach when it comes to facing off against pass rushers of that caliber where he puts certain plays in the game plan for when those guys are not on the field.
He talked about that last season when the Broncos were going up against the Raiders and Maxx Crosby, but the problem was that Crosby never came off the field. Payton never got to run the plays he wanted to run when Crosby went out for a swig of Gatorade or a quick breather.
To think, at one point this offseason, the Broncos had zero matchups against either Crosby or Garrett, and now they have to plan for them on three separate occasions. The Ravens reneged on the trade for Crosby earlier this offseason, and now Garrett is out of the AFC North altogether and in the Broncos' way early on in the season.
It must be nice to be in the AFC North these days.
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