If humanity ever fell to the robots like in The Matrix and they tried to itemize sports discourse into spreadsheets, the current Los Angeles Rams-Myles Garrett situation would be filed under “TEAM FAILS ALL-IN TRADE” as all humans continue to be harvested in the organic power plant in service of our machine overlords. But that would be a miscatigorization of the trade.

The Rams already went all-in … in 2021, and they won the Super Bowl. This is like The Rams Go All-In 2: Judgement Day, this time without Jalen Ramsey and Odell Beckham Jr. but with Davante Adams and Myles Garrett. But with Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay still here, and I don’t think you can call this some kind of failed experiment, because they accomplished their initial goal not five years ago. There is at least a five-year statute of limitations on crashing out about your lack of Super Bowl success.

I actually think the Myles Garrett trade needs to be filed under “BROWNS SELL HIGH ON 30-YEAR-OLD PASS RUSHER,” since the 4-2 Browns now look like geniuses for trading Garrett — who seems to have real knee problems that will keep him out for nearly half or more of the season — for a first, second and third-round pick and an elite young edge in Jared Verse. It is a comedic thought experiment to ask if the Browns would undo the trade right now if given the chance, a classic red flag to tell the Rams that they may be well and truly screwed.

It would be mighty convenient for the angle of this column if Verse was balling like crazy in Cleveland, but he actually really isn’t; there are some Browns social media tape-watchers telling me it’s not as bad as it looks, but Verse plain-and-simple hasn’t recorded a sack this year. They need him to, uh, do that. That’s his whole job. But I saw enough of Verse in Los Angeles to know he’s a great player — they don’t just give away Defensive Rookie of the Year awards, and I do believe he’ll eventually go down as the most valuable piece of the Garrett return…

…unless this disastrous 2-4 Rams season continues to fall apart like a cookie that you accidentally dropped in your cup of tea and now it’s just completely disintegrating (gross). For those unaware, the Rams, the Offseason Super Bowl Champions, are in last in the NFC West after losing to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 6. They lost despite not giving up a touchdown and themselves scoring two themselves — however, their new kicker Blake Grupe tore his ACL on a kickoff trying to tackle a returner and they therefore could not kick field goals for most of the game. The Cardinals kicker, Chad Ryland, therefore bombed six field goals on their heads and won 18-16 singlehandedly. Meanwhile, Davante Adams, one of the two competent receivers this offense possesses, injured his hamstring on one of the last plays of the game and will miss six to 10 weeks.

The Rams, who were supposedly a superteam, have invented new and interesting ways to lose football games all season and are careening towards giving the Browns a top-10 pick in the upcoming NFL draft. This is a bit of an alarming situation, but this is all also probably alarmist rhetoric — I seriously doubt that the Rams will go, like, 4-13 this year and give the Browns a top-five pick. That would be positively ridiculous, but the Rams are far more vulnerable than we all supposed they would be. Stafford does not look at all MVP-ish, and the heat-check decision to draft a quarterback with the 13th pick in last year’s draft might have been overdoing it. Maybe we could have drafted, oh I don’t know, an offensive lineman, or a … defensive back, or like, a wide receiver, or something. Just a thought!

The Browns instead could benefit from a Rams team that looks like one injury away from total free fall. They are now 0-2 against the NFC West, and still have three games left against the Seahawks and 49ers, which have all become USDA-certified must wins lest they want to start thinking about vacation destinations for January. Even if the Rams slightly course-correct, they could still easily miss the playoffs in the NFC. Their schedule is not that hard, but they’ve already lost to the Broncos and Cardinals who are … not good, so I don’t feel comfortable projecting they will run the table against the Raiders, Chargers, Commanders and Cardinals (again) like I would a few weeks ago.

The legacy of this trade cannot be decided after six weeks and will ultimately hinge on its centerpiece. If Garrett comes back at some point and turns the Rams’ presently paltry defense into a competitive unit, then we can have fair conversation. But I, someone who hates injury discourse as much as anyone, am uniquely concerned about his health. I’m confused as to why the Rams treated this injury with such cavalier casualness in training camp, describing it as “soreness,” having him play half a game in Week 1 clearly injured and then going on IR to have knee surgery. It almost feels like they made this trade without proper medical information, or at the very least mishandled the heck out of it preseason.

The rationalist in me wants to say that the Rams have enough talent to turn this around, obviously, and that talent usually beats worst-case-scenarios at the end of the day. But the Rams are also running out of talent — with Garrett and Adams out, the Rams also lost Kobie Turner and Poona Ford for extended periods. What looked like a superteam trading a worthless late-first-round pick now looks like a thinner-than-expected roster on the brink of something dark.

How dark? It will depend on if the Rams can stabilize and stop beating themselves. Currently, hey are manufacturing losses like the robots in The Matrix manufacture humans. If we learned anything from the intro, we need to get out of The Matrix — because that is a truly dark place.