Meet Me at the Quarterback - A Tribute to Myles Garrett

By Lee Wakefield

It feels pretty cool that in the first year that I’ve written about pass rushers is the year that the sack record was broken by one of my favourite players in the league.

This is a fitting way to wrap up the regular season, with a tribute to Myles Garrett and the season he’s had, where he has broken the NFL sack record.  The record, of 22.5 sacks, was set by Michael Strahan of the Giants in 2001, and equalled by T.J. Watt in 2021. Garrett notched his 23rd sack of the season by taking down Joe Burrow in the Browns’ 20-18 victory over the Bengals on Sunday.

There was nothing to play for, for either team, aside from pride, but the Browns and Garrett were pushing for their star player to get the outright record. Something that prompted on-field celebrations when it was achieved. Much to the annoyance of Bengals receiver JaMarr Chase.

So let’s look back on one of the most dominant defensive displays that we’ve seen in NFL history. And yes, to any party-poopers, Garrett did take 17 games to break the record, but honestly, if that’s your main concern, I’m not sure you’re in the right place.

Story of the Season

In a word. Dominance.

Garrett has been completely dominating opponents all season long. And what’s more, he’s broken the record and has this good a season, on a really pretty bad team.

The Browns have a final record of 5-12, they are scheduled for the sixth overall pick in April and finished bottom of the AFC North for the third time in four seasons. Aside from Garrett, the draft class from last spring gives them hope, but the pathway to being a legitimately good team isn’t abundantly clear.

The Cleveland offence struggled mightily all year, ranking 32nd in DVOA, in all three subcategories: overall (-34%), passing (-33.4%) and rushing (-22.6%). Why am I mentioning offence? Because it means that the Cleveland defence, which was actually a more than decent unit, was nearly always in negative game scripts.

I’ve previously discussed how defences want to stop the run early and earn the right to rush the passer on third and medium or third and long. Despite this and the sheer gravity of Garrett as someone that the offence is always going to game plan for, Garrett still managed to have the season he did.

Garrett put up his 23 sacks across thirteen games. Small shout-out to Pittsburgh, who held Garrett sackless in both of their contests this year. It appeared to be more important than beating the Browns in week 17.

Garrett had a run of nine consecutive games in which he recorded a sack. So whilst there were some outstanding individual games, the production was spread all throughout the season.

His biggest performance came on October 26th, on the road at New England. Garrett had five sacks and a forced fumble in that game.

The Browns lost this game, 32-13.

I mentioned gravity a moment ago. Something that epitomises the gravity and how much the opposing offensive lines’, and whatever help they can muster, game plan is tilted towards number 95, is the double-team rate that Garrett faced this year.

Garrett was double-teamed on 57% of his snaps this season.

For reference, in 2021, when T.J. Watt tied Strahan’s record, he was double-teamed at a rate of 15%. Teams dedicated an extra body or an extra pair of hands to stopping, or even attempting to disrupt, Myles Garrett on four times as many snaps as T.J. Watt had to deal with in his peak season.

Four times as many.

How many sacks would he have got if he weren’t ganged up on on around 40% fewer snaps?

Outside of sacks, Garrett racked up 84 pressures throughout the year, which was fourth-highest in the league. This was across 507 pass rush snaps, of those above him in pressures, Josh Hines-Allen rushed the passer on 559 snaps, which led to 95 pressures. League-leader Aidan Hutchinson, who had an impressive 100 pressures, rushed on 622 snaps. Garrett’s 507 pass rush snaps were tied for fifth-most in the league

To add to this tale of domination, Garrett was second, only to Will Anderson Jr., for pass rush win percentage. Garrett beat his man on 24.2% of the time, to Anderson’s 26.2%.

Fair to say that if he had another 115 rushes at quarterbacks around the league, he’d more than likely have surpassed Hutchinson’s 100 pressures, and potentially got up towards 30 sacks.

Video game numbers. Garrett is only thirty years old and has never suffered a major injury. He keeps himself in superb physical condition at all times and has always been renowned as a hard-working player off the field. With a better team around him, could we see Garrett break his own record in the next year or two, with a better situation and roster around him? 

All of this, the fact that Garrett is one of, if not the best player in the game, and is on a team that for the majority of his career has been a bad team, makes me wonder about his trade request last offseason.

I recently mused about Maxx Crosby being on a competitive team. I guess Garrett would cost too much to move, but at some point, it’d be great to see him on a team that has a chance of making some noise in the playoffs.

Perhaps making it bad there would be a start.

Back to Sunday, and it was very sweet to see both of Myles’ parents in attendance at the game to see their Son’s record-breaking moment. Dad had his camera at the ready, and Myles’ Mother was there to take in the celebrations once the time was right.

A moment they’ll surely cherish forever.

Looking forward, I can’t imagine that Garrett will angle once more for a trade – He’s locked into a long and lucrative contract and is the face of the franchise.

I guess he’ll just be hoping for another positive draft class and that the team make the correct call in replacing Kevin Stefanski as Head Coach, and that all of this adds up to a more competitive 2026 season for those from the Dawg Pound.

Whatever happens, Garrett’s season will be one that’ll be remembered forever by those in Northeast Ohio and beyond. 

Embed from Getty Images

The Record-Breaking Sack

Let’s take a brief look at the play where Garrett broke the record.

As mentioned above, the get-off is insane. According to NextGenStats, it took Myles 0.23 seconds to get off the snap on this snap. This makes it the fastest time recorded this season. For context, the league average is 0.70 seconds. 

He’s been doing this sort of thing all season, too, by the way. How can offensive tackles live with this? They carry more mass, are less fleet-footed and are on the defensive. They are then against a 6’5, 280 lb guy, with out-of-this-world power, hand-fighting techniques of a martial arts master, who can bend like a gymnast. All in all, Brown really stood no chance, did he?

He’s “not a normal human being”, as my colleague Thomas Willoughby put it in his Five Wide column this week. Read it by clicking that yellow bit there.

Anyway… Garrett bursts past Orlando Brown Jr., using the tackle’s movement to time up the snap, rather than the movement of the ball itself.

Once he senses the proverbial blood in the water, he shows otherworldly bend and flexibility to turn the corner and make his way to Joe Burrow.

Burrow attempts to climb the pocket, but by that point, it’s too late. He’s going to be wrapped up momentarily.

Number twenty-three.

Burrow and Garrett apparently exchanged some texts after the game about the record.

It was all respect, as it should be with two guys who are amongst the top players in the league, who see each other twice a year.

I’m sure Garrett will look forward to adding to the twelve sacks he has on Burrow in 2026 and beyond.

The Final Word

With this record and his place atop the pass rushing record books, if he hadn’t already, Garrett has assured his place in the Hall of Fame five years after he hangs them up.

To me, as I have stated in this column all season, he’s the best pass rusher in the league. I don’t think there’s a question of that. I didn’t think there was a question of that anyway, but offseason content cycles are a tough beast to feed, and we all know that some contrarian out there will claim that it isn’t Garrett at some point this summer.

Don’t give that person your click.

The question really isn’t whether Garrett is the best player at his position, or even whether he’s the best player in the league.

To me, it should be where he ranks on the list of all-time greats. Either at the pass rusher position or just in general.

That is a much more interesting question. This record now grants him access to those higher-echelon conversations.

For me, as a lover of defence and specifically defensive line play, I have always said the most dominant player I’ve seen in the twenty-ish years I’ve watched the sport is Aaron Donald. Obviously, Aaron Donald being an interior defensive lineman and Garrett being an edge defender, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Either way, it’s one of the two.

Is it even worth diving into it? Can’t we just say they’re both all-time greats and that be that?

They’re both first-ballot Hall of Famers, both played the game on a higher plane, putting up ridiculous numbers along the way. I can’t wait to see who the next player is who is worthy of being mentioned alongside them. But until then, we’ve still got Myles Garrett to enjoy for another few years yet. 

Lee Wakefield

NFL Content Lead

Lee Wakefield IS A defensive line enthusiast, Chargers Sufferer, and LONG-TIME writer and podcaster with a number of publications. @Wakefield90 on twitter/X.