If you watched Super Bowl 59 on Sunday evening, you saw one thing throughout the entire contest - with constant pressure on the Kansas City Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the Philadelphia Eagles were able to completely stop him and their high ceiling offense.
Despite not many blitzes, the Eagles' front four defense featuring some major plays from Josh Sweat and Milton Williams managed to bowl over the Chiefs' offensive line multiple times for multiple sacks and multiple turnovers. It was a night and day performance between their defense and Kansas City's, and it made the difference.
This performance, which led to a near shutout until some garbage time scoring from the Chiefs, showed exactly why the Cleveland Browns must attempt everything in their power to keep Myles Garrett from sitting out in 2025, and why they shouldn't trade him this offseason.
Myles Garrett can't get traded from the Browns
Garrett is the exact type of defender that teams seeking to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl next year are clamoring for - even the Eagles, which is the type of greed you've only heard about in fiction.
His 14 sacks and league-leading pressures from 2024 made him a DPOY finalist for the second year in a row, and while he lost the chance to win his second DPOY in a row, the nomination made it clear that he's still well within his prime at age 29. And, that cannot continue to be wasted by the Browns front office.
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Maybe Garrett has truly made up his mind, and no finagling of this roster will make it good enough for him to want to rescind his trade request. But, given that the team finally has draft capital back, they could try to acquire a better quarterback on the market than those available in free agency at minimum, and then fill out their roster with rookie skill players.
One thing was made clear in Super Bowl 59, though - players like Garrett are nearly priceless to a team looking to get over the hump from just contender to actual champion. His pass rush win rate of 22 percent from 2024 ranked sixth overall in the league, and that's with him going through lower body injuries earlier in the season.
Having a dominant defense begin with Garrett and end with, ideally, Cleveland managing to add one or two other young defenders around him on the D-line would do wonders for the Browns' ability to avoid a total rebuild. And, it'd help them to establish themselves as legitimate contenders a few seasons from now assuming they've rebuilt themselves correctly - i.e., with a great quarterback.
While it'd be fun for the NFL to see Garrett slide in alongside Milton Williams or Aidan Hutchinson, it'd be a major step back for the Browns in their quest to salvage what they think - and what David Njoku thinks - is a currently winning roster.