Cleveland Browns: 3 players who need more freedom in 2019
By Randy Gurzi
1. Myles Garrett, Defensive End
We again have ourselves a No. 1 overall pick who needs more freedom in 2019. Defensive end Myles Garrett was the top pick in the 2017 NFL Draft out of Texas A&M and was expected to be the defensive leader for the next 10-plus seasons for the Browns.
After missing five games as a rookie, he started to break out in year two as he played in all 16 games and finished with 44 tackles and 13.5 sacks. As impressive as that was, Garrett claims he wasn’t given the freedom he hoped for as defensive coordinator (and eventual interim head coach) Gregg Williams limited him to just two moves.
"“I hopefully have more freedom to be the player I want to be,” Garrett said via Dan Pompei of Bleacher Report. “Gregg was more like: ‘You win with these two moves. I don’t want to see anything else out of you.’ It’s kind of hard with two moves. I feel like you can’t always be so predictable. You can be as strong or fast as you want, but speed chop and power move aren’t always going to work. You have to mix up what you’re doing. Sometimes you have to stutter step, sometimes you have to spin inside, you have to run some games. You have to have some freedom to throw different looks at them, and we didn’t always have that.”"
Garrett is an absolute monster of an athlete and the fact that he wasn’t given the freedom he desired seems like a felony. Listed at 6-foot-4 and 272-pounds, Garrett has the kind of physical tools most of us can only dream of.
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He also has aspirations of being an NFL Defensive Player of the Year one day and that can only happen if he’s given more freedom to use every pass rush move at his disposal.