As Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken said to reporters, it’s 100 percent within Myles Garrett’s right to skip Phase 1 of the team’s offseason workout program, which kicked off this week. The workouts are voluntary, and for established vets like Garrett, there’s not a ton going on at the team facility in April that will make a major difference in September.
Garrett has also spent much of his now decade-long tenure in Cleveland emphasizing one word: winning. He’s spent the prime years of his career racking up unmatched statistics and top individual honors only to see his team finish above .500 once over the last five seasons.
It likely wasn’t a coincidence, then, that Monken seemed to repeat the words “win” and “winning” as many times as humanly possible during his 20-plus minute session with reporters on Wednesday.
"What changes everything? Winning changes everything," Monken said. "I told the coaches that the other day. ... How does a player stop a narrative? Play well. How do we stop a narrative on offense? Score. How do you stop a narrative on winning? Win. It’s pretty frickin’ simple.
“Use every minute of every day," he added. "It’s all about winning. It’s what we do, right? Within the rules, use every minute of every day, every resource that we have to help develop our players and help develop our systems that allow us to play clean and to play fast.”
If the 60-year-old, first-year NFL head coach is going to win over the locker room in Year 1, it all starts with winning over the current face of the franchise.
Todd Monken’s message faces its first real test without Myles Garrett
Garrett wasn’t expected to attend this portion of the Browns’ offseason program, which Monken admitted was more about connection, bonding, and schematics. Coaches won’t be able to run organized on-field activities with players for another couple of weeks.
Should Garrett catch real heat for skipping these workouts, as he did during Kevin Stefanski's tenure? Absolutely not.
Would it have been a good look for him to make an appearance in support of Monken and the new coaching staff this year? Definitely.
We’re more than 13 weeks removed from the final game of the Browns’ 2025 season, and Garrett is scheduled to earn $31.5 million in real cash during the 2026 league year, per Spotrac. He could have thrown his new coach a bone this week just by showing up and echoing the same message — that winning is everything and nothing else matters. He could have helped Monken set that tone.
Instead, his absence will only fuel the speculation about his true feelings of Monken, who was hired over Garrett's guy, former Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, and whether he would welcome a trade this summer after publicly campaigning for one a year ago.
Monken’s clearly not focused on a long rebuild. He’s been saying all the right things, and his desire to build a winning program in Cleveland should resonate with Garrett more than anyone else in the building. But until the new head coach and the Browns’ franchise player are in lockstep, it’s going to be hard for anyone to take this team seriously in 2026.