LOS ANGELES (AP) — Myles Garrett will return to practice this week with the Los Angeles Rams after missing the past seven games with a knee injury.
Rams coach Sean McVay said Monday that the team is opening Garrett's 21-day practice window to return from injured reserve. The defensive end won the AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year award last season with Cleveland before he joined the Rams last June in a blockbuster trade.
McVay wouldn't predict how long Garrett would need to prepare for his return to the lineup. The Rams (4-4) have won two straight for the first time in their up-and-down season as they head to Washington on Sunday.
“I want to be careful to (not) even set any sort of expectations,” McVay said. “I think just taking it a day at a time is going to be the best way that we can approach it. I think that’s the right thing for him, and really just to see how he responds. But I think it’s a real positive that we’re starting his clock.”
Garrett played in the Rams' season opener in Australia two months ago but was ineffective and made no tackles. Afterward, he acknowledged the true significance of the knee injury that kept him out for long stretches of his first training camp with Los Angeles.
Garrett underwent knee surgery shortly after the Rams returned from Melbourne. The team had given no indication how quickly Garrett would return as his absence stretched to the midpoint of the season, but McVay is hopeful his prize offseason acquisition will be back on the field shortly.
Garrett is third among active NFL players with 125 1/2 career sacks. He was the league's Defensive Player of the Year in 2023 and 2025, and he has earned seven Pro Bowl selections.
The Rams traded Pro Bowl edge rusher Jared Verse and three high draft picks to the Browns for Garrett — and their pass rush has been meager in his absence.
Los Angeles is 27th in the league in both sacks (12) and in sacks per pass play. Byron Young leads the Rams with 4 1/2 sacks, while nobody else has more than two.
Garrett has yet to play with Aaron Donald, who was drawn out of his 2 1/2-year retirement partly by the opportunity to play alongside one of his few generational peers in defensive line play. Donald didn't travel to Australia, and he has made 12 tackles in six games on the Rams' line.
McVay also said the Rams likely will open the practice window for pass-catching tight end Terrance Ferguson, who has been out since September with an ankle injury.
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FILE - Los Angeles Rams defensive end Myles Garrett walks back to the locker room before an NFL football game in Inglewood, Calif., Oct. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong, File)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A business jet that crashed in South Florida with nine people aboard, including a family with two young children, likely started breaking apart before it slammed into the ground and erupted in a fireball, a federal investigator said Monday.
Video recorded by passersby captured the Bahamas-bound Learjet's rapid nosedive Sunday afternoon before it exploded in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining the crater as shocked residents looked on in horror. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site and little remained of the plane.
The victims included 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, as well as technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their two young children, relatives said.
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said during a news conference Monday that investigators found evidence the aircraft started breaking up before it hit the ground and that debris from the aircraft could be spread far and wide.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said key components of the jet's tail may have been lost during the turbulence or as it nose-dived, making the plane impossible to control.
“That very well could explain the missile-like profile just before it hit the ground," he said.
Weather conditions will be a major focus of the investigation, Chapman said. Rain pounded the region on Sunday, and one of the pilots told air traffic control about icing conditions at a high altitude.
At the time of the crash, there was an FAA warning out to pilots in the area about nearly-stationary thunderstorms with cloud tops reaching all the way up to 45,000 feet, according to AccuWeather. Pilots are trained to avoid thunderstorms, if possible, for safety.
Chapman said investigators still have to determine what the weather conditions were at 35,000 feet (11,000 meters), the altitude the plane was flying at when the pilot started reporting problems.
Retired airline pilot John Cox, who is now CEO of the Safety Operating Systems consulting business, said the conditions the pilot described on the radio, with turbulence as well as liquid precipitation freezing on the plane at negative 47 degrees Celsius, would have terrified him.
Typically, precipitation at that altitude and temperature comes in the form of ice crystals that simply go around the plane, he said.
“Those are all really big red flags to me," he said.
Chapman said the plane was originally equipped with a cockpit voice recorder that investigators hope to recover.
“We have a lot of work to do on scene,” NTSB investigator Timothy Monville said at the news conference. “This will be a several-day process, and the biggest obstacle that we’re going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway.”
The jet began its journey at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas with two crew and seven passengers, Chapman said.
Camila Corteleti told the New York Post and New York Times that her daughter, 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, was one of the pilots. She earned her pilot’s license in 2023 while a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School in Florida, local news reports said at the time.
Her pilot’s license showed she had the rating to fly that model of Learjet but not to be in command of the flight.
Her father, Allan Filgueiras, told The Associated Press he wasn’t prepared to speak about the crash.
The identity of the other pilot was not immediately disclosed.
A man who was driving close to the scene as the plane crashed suffered leg wounds, Monville said, but he didn't know the extent of the injury.
The plane was heading east when the pilot started to report problems. According to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net, the pilot said ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 700 feet (210 meters).
“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot told controllers.
The situation rapidly deteriorated.
The pilot requested permission to climb another 2,000 feet (610 meters) and then quickly declared an emergency as the jet lost altitude at an alarming rate.
“We’re descending 8,000 — mayday, mayday — we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed.
“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed. Moments later, the pilot said: “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
Video shows the plane banking sharply to the right before crashing and exploding.
Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel G. Flores said at a news conference that the county “doesn’t have a clue” when residents who live near the crash site will be able to return to their homes as investigators continue to comb the area for debris and other material that could be used to investigate the cause of the crash.
A shelter has been established for the residents of almost 80 mobile homes near the crash site, Flores said.
“Our concern right now is clearing the scene so that our residents can get back to normal,” he said. “We don’t really have a timeline as to when they are going to be able to comb through all the evidence and do everything they need to do, and that leaves our community looking for answers.”
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; and Philip Marcelo in East Meadow, New York, contributed.
This story has been corrected to show the crash happened in Greenacres, not Green Acres.
This image taken from Aki Kuusisto's video shows a small jet crashing in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (Aki Kuusisto via AP)
Police stand near the scene of a plane crash in Greenacres, Fla., Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Police work near the scene of a plane crash in Greenacres, Fla., Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Law enforcement respond to a plane crash in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Elias)
Law enforcement respond to a plane crash in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Elias)
Law enforcement respond to a plane crash in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Elias)
