Louis Riddick says the quiet part out loud about Myles Garrett trade talk

On the heels of a massively disappointing three-win season, when it became painfully clear that the team’s current direction wasn’t working, Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam had a golden opportunity to blow it up.

His franchise player, defensive end Myles Garrett, wasn’t only requesting a trade, he was openly campaigning for one in the media. And with quarterback Deshaun Watson’s 2025 season completely dashed due to a reruptured Achilles tendon suffered in January, the timing was about as right as it was ever going to be to shop one of the NFL’s most valuable players for a king’s ransom.

Haslam and the Browns refused, instead doubling down on Garrett with a contract extension that, at the time, made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history. Garrett went on to record 23 sacks to break the league’s all-time record for a single season, while the team (to the surprise of no one) struggled at the quarterback position and needed back-to-back wins at the end of the season to finish 5-12.

NFL trade chatter tends to pick up steam during the scouting combine in Indianapolis, which hosted the annual event this week. The trade winds on Garrett? They’ve been quiet since he signed his four-year, $160 million extension last March.

Insider Dan Graziano told ESPN’s panel of analysts on Friday’s episode of Get Up that he doesn’t believe the Browns are actively considering a Garrett trade this offseason.

“They could,” Graziano said. “The extension that they did last offseason doesn’t prohibit that in any way for the acquiring team, doesn't crush the Browns on dead money. But they’ve never indicated any interest in doing it.”

Perhaps, still in the midst of the franchise-crippling mistake that was the Watson trade and contract, Haslam refused to let go of a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Or maybe, as former NFL GM Mike Tannenbaum suggested on Get Up, the Browns haven’t yet received an offer they can’t refuse.

Tannenbaum tossed out a trade idea between Cleveland and Detroit, with the Lions acquiring Garrett for two first-round picks and 24-year-old wide receiver Jameson Williams. The entire panel, including host Mike Greenberg, Graziano, and former NFL execute Louis Riddick, believed the Browns would accept that specific offer in a hypothetical vacuum.

But Riddick revealed the harsh reality around a potential blockbuster trade involving Garrett: If it was going to happen, it would’ve happened last year.

The Browns may have already missed their best chance to move Myles Garrett

It’s hardly a secret that the Browns have a less-than-ideal salary cap situation entering the 2026 league year. They’ll need to executive major contract restructures on guys like Watson and cornerback Denzel Ward to clear the necessary salary cap space to function in free agency and the draft. That’s all 100 percent procedural, but the Browns have already racked up large sums of dead money (salary cap charges for players no longer on the roster), and more are coming with their looming moves.

Trading Garrett after his mega extension complicates matters. Moving him this March, for example, prior to free agency would cost the team about $41 million against the cap. His current cap hit for 2026 is a reasonable $23.6 million, so a trade would actually cost the team an additional $17.4 million in cap charges this year, according to Over the Cap.

The Browns could mitigate those costs by waiting until after June 1 to execute a trade, which would allow the team to split Garrett’s dead-cap charges up between 2026 and 2027. That’s not realistic, though, because his pre-draft trade value would be significantly higher than it would be in the summer, when teams’ rosters and budgets are pretty much set. 

Riddick doesn’t see much value in discussing Garrett trade hypotheticals, like the idea Tannenbaum cooked up with Detroit. If the Browns were going to make a move, they would’ve done it last year — when Garrett was demanding it.

“I understand why they didn’t listen," Riddick said. "I understand why you’re reluctant to do this kind of thing, but that’s usually because you’re just not being honest about where you’re at in terms of your own program building, and where your organization is. And that’s what the Browns are doing. That’s what teams always do when you’re talking about premium players like this. That’s why they don’t like entertaining this kind of thing.

But hey, they’re still where they’re at. They’re still not anywhere closer to contending in their division or in the conference overall. And now the contract is even more prohibitive. They’re going to have to take a massive hit in order to trade this young man. They’re in a bad spot. I don’t see them trading him. I don’t think it’s going to happen. It should have happened a year ago.”

The Browns made their choice last spring. Garrett's new contract was structured more for their team’s future than to turn around and trade him one year later. General manager Andrew Berry managed to not only extend the league’s best defensive player, but land an extra first-round pick in the top 24 via a savvy trade with the Jacksonville Jaguars. 

The Browns can hoard all the future draft capital they want. If they don’t find a franchise quarterback, they won’t be competing for anything any time soon.

To that point, hypothetical trade ideas that swap Garrett for late-first-round draft picks don't move the needle as much as ESPN's analysts seem to have convinced themselves.