Insider finally says the quiet part out loud about Myles Garrett’s Browns future

There’s a very realistic chance that Myles Garrett could set the NFL’s single-season record for sacks in a season in Week 14. Garrett’s Cleveland Browns head to Tennessee Sunday to face a Titans team that’s already surrendered 48 sacks in 12 games, the most in football.

The optics, however, around Garrett rewriting the record books amid another losing season is not lost on Browns fans. 

As Michael Strahan said during the FOX pregame show last week, Garrett’s not only poised to break the NFL’s sack record — he’s likely going to demolish it. He’s posted at least one sack in each of Cleveland’s last six games, including a career-high five in Week 8 against Drake Maye and the New England Patriots, and another four against Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens on Nov. 16.

But Cleveland’s record in spite of Garrett’s greatness has been coming to a head recently. The soon-to-be two-time Defensive Player of the Year publicly requested a trade this past offseason, only for the Browns to instead lock him up with a $160 million extension that, at the time, made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history on a per-year basis.

The brutal truth in 2025 is that the Browns will take a 3-9 record and minus-76 point differential into Sunday’s game against the Titans. Despite some undeniable young talent on the roster from this year’s loaded draft class, Garrett’s desire to win now could spark more internal discussions this spring, when the Browns’ superstar’s value figures to be at an all-time high.

Myles Garrett’s historic 2025 season could be his swang song with the Cleveland Browns 

In a perfect world, the Browns keep Garrett well-paid and happy as they continue to rebuild an offense that has no clear direction at quarterback and has plummeted to the bottom of the league. NFL insider Dan Graziano, however, doesn’t think fans should forget about Garrett’s Super Bowl media campaign back in February, when he “let the world know he wanted out of Cleveland because he's sick of losing.”

Yes, Garrett just signed an extension that tethers him to Cleveland through the 2030 season. He’s also about to turn 30 at the end of this month, and he’s experienced exactly three playoff games over his nine-year career with the Browns.

It’s no mystery why general manager Andrew Berry would ignore Garrett’s trade request back in February. The Browns were coming off a three-win season, and trading franchise cornerstones is a great way to ship yourself out of town.

But with owner Jimmy Haslam likely to consider a full regime change this offseason, as another season circles the drain, the idea of new leadership coming in and shopping Garrett’s hefty contract for premium draft capital (and a player?) starts to feel a lot more realistic. 

Graziano called Garrett one of the league’s likely surprise trade candidates in 2026, due not only to Garrett’s desire to compete for Super Bowls now while still in his prime, but because of his new contract that is a lot more tradable than people think.

“He is guaranteed about $62 million over the next two years, so an acquiring team would be getting a deal if he continued to play anywhere near his current level. The Browns would incur around $41 million in dead cap charges if they were to trade him, which is about half of what the Broncos took in dead money when they cut Russell Wilson (and they're 20-10 since they did that).

I'm not saying it's going to happen. What I am saying is that, if circumstances changed and either through Garrett's doing or for other reasons the Browns changed their stance, the contract is tradable. What is a list like this for if not to enlighten y'all on something like that?”

As for the potential return in a trade? The obvious comp is Micah Parsons, who Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys traded this summer to Green Bay for three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark, and two first-round draft picks.

With Garrett now entering the conversion as the greatest defensive player of all time, right next to Lawrence Taylor, and looking faster and more physically dominant than he was in his mid-20s, there’s no doubt the Browns would fetch a similar return to Parsons in a trade, if not even better.

The elephant in the room is that Taylor and the New York Giants won two Super Bowls, and to truly be considered the GOAT, Garrett will need more opportunities to get rings of his own. With his team about to hit the reset button once again in 2026, it’s painfully obvious that those opportunities aren’t coming anytime soon in Cleveland.