Myles Garrett Heads to IR for Knee Surgery, Rams’ Super Bowl Odds Already Sliding Before Four-Game Absence

Myles Garrett is headed to injured reserve. The Los Angeles Rams announced Sunday that their star pass rusher will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, a procedure that puts him on IR for a minimum of four games. Garrett will miss matchups against the Giants, Broncos, Eagles and Bills, with the earliest possible return coming in Week 6 against the Arizona Cardinals.

The timing stings. Garrett is just one game into his Rams tenure after arriving in one of the offseason’s biggest trades, and the knee issue that limited him all summer never actually cleared up. He played through it in the Rams’ Week 1 opener, a 27-7 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia, and afterward admitted the outing was “the worst version of myself that I’ve put out there.” Los Angeles opted for surgery rather than let him try to grind through it, a decision that trades four weeks of short-term pain for the hope of getting a fully healthy Garrett back for the stretch run.

How Garrett Got Here and Why This Injury Matters

The Rams acquired Garrett from Cleveland in a blockbuster June trade, sending pass rusher Jared Verse and three future draft picks — a 2027 first-rounder, a 2028 second-rounder and a 2029 third-rounder — back to the Browns. It was the price of adding a two-time Defensive Player of the Year coming off the best season by any pass rusher in NFL history: 23 sacks in 2025, breaking the single-season record shared by Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt. Garrett is a five-time first-team All-Pro, a seven-time Pro Bowler, and the only player in NFL history to post at least 10 sacks in eight consecutive seasons.

None of that showed up against San Francisco. Garrett had missed most of training camp with swelling in the knee, and coach Sean McVay had been managing his workload from the moment he arrived. Now instead of managing it, the Rams are shutting it down entirely. Desjuan Johnson, listed as Garrett’s backup on the depth chart, is set to absorb the bulk of the edge-rushing snaps while Garrett recovers, with the rest of the Rams’ defensive front needing to make up the difference against a four-game slate that includes two 2025 playoff teams in the Eagles and Bills. Los Angeles will need its secondary and interior line to generate pressure on their own for at least a month, and how that group holds up will say a lot about how deep this roster really is beyond its two biggest offseason additions.

What the Betting Market Is Saying

The oddsmakers had already been recalibrating the Rams before Sunday’s IR news. Los Angeles opened as roughly a +800 Super Bowl favorite before the Garrett trade, then tightened to as low as +500 as the summer went on, making the Rams the only team in the league priced with single-digit Super Bowl odds. The Week 1 blowout loss to the 49ers — with Garrett clearly compromised — was the first crack: the Rams’ Super Bowl number drifted from +500 back out to roughly +600, while the 49ers moved up from around +325 to +185 and the NFC West race, once effectively Los Angeles’ to lose at close to even odds, loosened to roughly +165 for the Rams alongside the 49ers and Seahawks near +185. The Rams’ season win total, which had been juiced toward the over near 11.5, has since ticked back toward the under.

That repricing happened before the surgery was officially announced, which makes the next round of market movement worth watching. A four-game absence for the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and the centerpiece of a trade that cost three future draft picks is the kind of news books can’t shrug off. Expect the Rams’ win total, division and conference futures to see continued softening as sportsbooks digest exactly how much of Los Angeles’ pass rush was built around one player who won’t be available again until, at the earliest, Week 6. Any prop or futures market tied to team sacks, pressure rate or defensive splits over the next month will be pricing in Desjuan Johnson and the rest of the front seven carrying a significantly heavier load without their most disruptive piece.

The bigger question for bettors is how quickly the market reprices once Garrett is back to full health. The Rams still have Matthew Stafford, a loaded offense and a roster built to win now, and none of that changes because of a knee scope. But futures markets are forward-looking, and a full month without the game’s most disruptive pass rusher is exactly the kind of stretch that can turn a projected double-digit win season into a tighter margin — which is where the value or the risk in the Rams’ current numbers will ultimately get decided.