The NFL just made the announcement that every Cleveland Browns fan expected: Myles Garrett is the league’s AFC Defensive Player of the Month for November.
Because of course he is.
Garrett enters Cleveland’s final five games of 2025 on an all-time heater, with 14 sacks over his last five games. For context, the player currently sitting second behind Garrett’s 19 sacks for this entire season is Brian Burns with 13, and Burns’ New York Giants have played 13 games to the Browns’ 12 so far this season.
Some serious sack carnage could be coming this week, with Garrett hunting rookie quarterback Cam Ward of the 1-10 Tennessee Titans Sunday in Nashville. Ward has already been sacked a league-high 48 times in 2025.
Garrett’s impact goes deeper than sack totals; although, that will rightfully be the main focus as he looks to shatter the NFL’s official single-season record of 22.5, held by both Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt. Over Cleveland’s last three games, Garrett has registered 26 total QB pressures, or 8.7 per game, per Pro Football Focus; if he can continue that pace over the Browns’ remaining five games, he’ll clear 100 pressures in a season for the first time in his career.
In the modern stat-tracking era, Micah Parsons has stood alone in that department. Using PFF’s metrics, Parsons had 106 pressures in back-to-back regular seasons (2022-23) with the Dallas Cowboys. Garrett’s career-high is 89, but he should blow past that number when you consider he already has 62 pressures in 12 games and will be chasing NFL lore down the stretch.
We all know how this story ends, as long as Garrett stays healthy. He’s not only going to break the NFL’s single-season sack record, he’s likely going to annihilate it, fetching the second NFL Defensive Player of the Year award in his nine-year career in the process.
But would that honor be enough if Garrett achieves a feat that might never be touched again in our lifetimes? He’s not seriously being considered, but there’s a growing segment of the NFL world that’s talking about Garrett’s potential resume for MVP when all’s said and done, and it’s a worthy discussion that’s probably not getting enough play right now.
Former NFL player Mark Schlereth on Myles Garrett: ‘He should be the MVP of this league’
Mark Schlereth played 12 NFL seasons as an offensive guard, and won three Super Bowl titles over a pair of long stints in Washington and Denver.
In other words, he has a unique perspective on stud defensive linemen, and he did not hold back on Garrett’s historic 2025 season to date on a recent radio spot with 92.3 The Fan.
"He's doing things that nobody in the history of this league has done. It's unbelievable. That dude is getting double-teamed on almost every play. He's got 19 sacks right now," @markschlereth pic.twitter.com/W41dlGXOzW
— BrownsNation.com (@BrownsNationcom) December 4, 2025
To Schlereth’s point, Garrett’s numbers could be otherworldly at the end of the season, despite him being the weekly focus of every team’s offensive game plan. Come Week 18 against the Cincinnati Bengals, he could be poised to pad his new NFL record against Joe Burrow, who he’s already sacked 12 times in his career (tied with Lamar Jackson for No. 1 in Garrett’s Graveyard).
Should you be truly considered for MVP when you do things never before done in NFL history? In a vacuum, of course you should. But the entire MVP process has been broken for a while, and all Garrett’s 2025 season can really do is expose it further.
The league should change the award to MVQ at this point, for “Most Valuable Quarterback.” The last defensive player to win MVP was Lawrence Taylor in 1986. In the 38 years since, quarterbacks have won the award 32 times, including the last 12 in a row, per Pro Football Reference.
Isn’t it ironic? If the season ended today, the award would go to New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye — who Garrett sacked a career-high five times back in Week 8.
The obvious rebuttal here is the Browns’ 3-9 record, and 39.2 winning percentage over Garrett’s nine seasons. The lasting image of Garrett’s 2025 quest to date was probably him slamming his helmet and sitting on the bench alone after the best statistical performance of his career resulted in a 32-13 loss to the Patriots (and it wasn’t even that close).
The MVP award has always been tied to winning, which is why the quarterbacks get all the love. On a macro level, Garrett is chasing Taylor as the greatest singular defensive player of all time, but it’s impossible to ignore that Taylor’s 1986 MVP award came during a year when the Giants also went on to win the Super Bowl.
If there’s a current player in the NFL who could buck the trend and win NFL MVP on defense, it’s Garrett. But as he and Browns fans know, it’s unlikely to happen if he finishes his career in Cleveland.