Los Angeles Rams edge rusher Jared Verse enjoyed a quality debut NFL season that ended with a Defensive Rookie of the Year Award. He led the league with 89 pressures despite only registering only 4.5 sacks.

Now, as he enters Year 2, the expectation is that Verse will turn those pressures into more sacks. And ESPN’s Seth Walder agrees Verse should take down the quarterback more in 2025. He projects Verse will finish with at least seven sacks this season (the exact projection is 7.4 sacks, which we’ll just say is between seven and 7.5), which is tied for 24th with Kyle Van Noy, Boye Mafe, Jonathan Cooper and Andrew Van Ginkel.

Walder’s model is based on a few elements, including age, sack totals and rates over the past two seasons (for which Verse only has one season of), projected snaps, pass rush win rate (PRWR), past sack rates for opposing quarterbacks on each pass rusher’s 2025 schedule, team win totals from the betting market and how often a player lines up at edge vs. the interior.

Verse’s number is solid, but not quite what the Rams would hope coming from his second second. Especially after he also tallied 18 quarterback hits as a rookie. Verse plays on a rush-heavy defensive line, though, so the Rams may spread the wealth out in the sack department this season. Players like Braden Fiske, Byron Young and Kobie Turner will certainly get theirs in 2025, and let’s not forget about veteran Poona Ford in the middle of the defensive line or third-round rookie edge rusher Josaiah Stewart.

Turner actually made Walder’s top-50 rankings as well with 7.0 projected sacks. That tied for 30th with Kwity Paye. Weirdly, that would be Turner’s worst sack season of his career after he tallied nine and eight sacks in the past two years, respectively. Fiske, who had 8.5 sacks in 2024, and Young, who had 7.5 sacks a year ago, were not ranked.

This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: ESPN predicts Jared Verse and Kobie Turner’s 2025 sack totals