Braden Fiske and Jared Verse have a friendship that goes back to college. They were teammates at Florida State and after helping the Seminoles put together an undefeated regular season in 2023, they were both drafted by the Los Angeles Rams in 2024 – Verse in the first round and Fiske in the second.
But this past summer, they were split up. The Rams traded Verse to the Browns for Myles Garrett , a blockbuster deal that came out of nowhere. Fiske remains in Los Angeles, 2,000 miles away from his good friend Verse.
Fiske was gutted to lose Verse in that trade, but in a recent interview with Jordan Schultz , he acknowledged that maybe it was a good thing to be on separate teams because of how comfortable they got being teammates for three straight years.
"At the same time, I think it was a good thing to happen to my career that – I think there was a lull in our career of like, 'Oh, this is just great. Get to work with our best friends every single day and just go about our business,'" Fiske said. "I think we were a little naïve to believe that that was something that would last forever, when in reality, that's just not how it works. That was kind of a fairytale type of situation."
Even if a part of Fiske thinks the trade was good for him, he was still devastated to lose Verse as a teammate.
"The surreal story of getting drafted to the same team," Fiske said. "All that built up, it created such a good bond, a good relationship with each other that, yeah, when it did go down, that was honestly – yeah, you hear all the time that 'business is business.' Until the business directly affects you, you don't really understand, so that was a direct hit of, 'Oh yeah, it can happen to anybody.'
"That hit pretty hard pretty quick. My first instinct isn't, 'Oh, s---. We got Myles Garrett.' My first instinct is like, 'Oh, s---. We lost Jared. That really sucks.' Obviously, time heals and having Myles around and knowing Jared's taking care of what he's got to take care of in Cleveland, it's one of those things that heals over time and we're going to make it happen one way or another because at the end of the day, it's still a business."
Fiske says he doesn't talk to Verse as much as he used to, but that's partly because they're both so busy working toward the start of the season. He expects to spend some more time with Verse during the offseason, though.
This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Braden Fiske admits Rams trading Jared Verse could be 'good thing' for him
