Campaigning For Myles Garrett
Why the best defensive player in the league should be generating early NFL MVP noise
The National Football League has awarded a Most Valuable Player every season since 1957. Awards of that name always cause consternation between the people who care most about it, mainly because there’s always a debate over the difference between “most valuable” and “best.” Common sense says the best players are the most valuable, but people like to parse statistics or positional value to elevate certain players over those whose raw stats might suggest they deserve recognition. The litigation in most cases is a big farce, no more than in football, where all but three times, the award has been given to either a running back or a quarterback. More recently, the NFL MVP has seemed like a synonym for “The Best Quarterback Award,” because the last ten times, 15 out of the last 16, and 19 times out of the 23 that have been awarded in this decade, the winner has played that position. Par for the course for a league obsessed about finding any edge they can at that position:
Football is a complex sport with two specialized sides of the ball. It’s the only sport where players do not both play offense and defense, and one might think that there should be an equal recognition of value on the defensive side as there is on the offensive. Amazingly enough, two of the three times the award was not given to a quarterback or running back, a defensive player won – Lawrence Taylor in 1986 and Alan Page in 1971. The other aberrant winner? Kicker Mark Moseley in the strike-shortened 1983 season, which might be the most anomalous MVP ever across any of the four major sports in North America. But I digress.
The obvious reason is that defensive statistics are harder to measure meaningfully, and most people recognize that those counting stats don’t mean as much. Additionally, it’s a lot harder to play defense in today’s NFL thanks to rule changes nerfing individual players’ ability to make contact, inconsistent and lopsided application of the pass interference rules, and the fact that offensive football evolves far more quickly than defensive football. Perhaps that’s the reason why Page and Taylor were able to claim their awards before any wide receiver or tight end, the other obvious offensive positions who could presumably win one, ever could. When you’re that good playing defense in a league that has almost always favored offense? You leap off the page.
This year, another defensive player feels like he should be in the conversation. The conditions seem to be ripe for another defensive player to gain recognition above Defensive Player of the Year. Offenses seem to be struggling across the board. Even teams with firepower and explosiveness, like the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Chargers, and even to some degree the Philadelphia Eagles, are not putting out the fireworks that were expected of them. While there are teams moving the ball at will with avatar players who would make fine MVP candidates, like the 49ers and Christian McCaffrey, Dolphins and Tua Tagovailoa, and Ravens and Lamar Jackson, there’s an interesting candidate in an offbeat team that I think should merit serious consideration.
The Cleveland Browns have played six ugly football games so far this year. Five of them have been defensive slopfests. The sixth, this past week, saw them get into a harebrained shootout in Indianapolis against the Colts. Even with that seeming outlier in the books, the Browns have held their opponents to stiflingly low point and yardage outputs. They brought low the mighty 49ers for their only loss of the year to date. They put the clamps on the high-powered Bengals offense and suffocated the Titans. Even in getting torched this past Sunday, it’s arguable that defense won them the game, or at least a defensive player.
Myles Garrett was the first overall selection in the 2017 Draft, and ever since then, he’s been a force majeure on the Browns’ defensive line. Casual fans who only know him because he ripped the helmet off Mason Rudolph’s head and swung it at him in 2019 do him a disservice. Besides, while the incident was gruesome in intent, if Garrett is to be believed, Rudolph had used racial epithets in the lead-up to the incident. If that’s true, I’m not sure I’d blame Garrett for his reaction, but I digress.
Garrett has consistently been one of the best, if not the best pass rusher in the league in his six-plus seasons. You might not hear about him too much for various reasons. It’s hard to grab the imagination of the league at large on defense, even when you’re at the vanguard for your position. You have to play for an old-money franchise like the Dallas Cowboys, which is why people are banging drums for Micah Parsons for MVP or why people consider Trevon Diggs an above-average cornerback for all his interceptions even though he also is among the worst in the league at allowing yards on receptions, or at least he was before he went out for the year with an injury. Or maybe you’re a pretty-boy white kid with a family name like the Bosas or the Watts. Sometimes though, you become so good at what you do that you can’t be denied.
This year, Garrett is achieving transcendence. Through six games, he has seven-and-a-half sacks. He’s winning battles against the offensive line at such a rate that he disrupts plays even when he doesn’t show up in the stat sheet. Double- and triple-teams can barely slow him down. Against the Colts, he might have had the signature defensive game of any individual player this year so far. He tallied two sacks, both of which caused fumbles, one of which was in the end zone and led directly to a Browns touchdown. He blocked a field goal that led to another three points for the Browns by leaping and clearing the Colts’ offensive line completely. Yes, the Browns gave up their season high in yards and points, but Garrett’s virtuoso performance is probably the sole reason why they won that game. Well, that and loose officiating at the end, but the party line here on The Mental Health Break is that NFL officiating does not favor one team over the other in its effervescent ineptitude. It’s just a Thing that must be contended with on a week-to-week basis, and you never know when it’s going to harm or help your team. So you might as well just play your best football, huh?
To me, when you’re that disruptive that even when the unit you lead shits the bed otherwise, you lead them to a win, you are the definition of “most valuable.” Look at the Browns overall. The guy they paid a quarter-billion dollars guaranteed to, much to the delight of everyone rightfully praying on his downfall, has either been hurt or inefficient.
Their best offensive skill player BY FAR, Nick Chubb, went down with an injury in Week 2. The rest of the defense is talented, especially cornerback Denzel Ward, but there’s no doubt that if Garrett wasn’t there, this team might have one win at best.
Do I have any expectation that Garrett will win the MVP? Absolutely not. He might win DPOY running away, but even with their offense shitting the bed against the Eagles Sunday night, Tagovailoa still might be the odds on MVP. The only person who can realistically catch him at this point, especially if McCaffrey misses more than a few games with injury, is Jackson. I’m not saying Garrett should be seen as a realistic option to win. I’m saying he should absolutely get that consideration in a fair and just world.
The Most Valuable Player award, if judged by marginal value added to a team, should not be fiat-awarded to a quarterback every year. There are some years where a QB’s value is undeniable. Hell, even though he won’t get the love this year, look at what Patrick Mahomes is doing with his best target being a banged-up Travis Kelce? But there are years where the best player in the league goes to work at an unsung position. Sometimes that player is a wide receiver. Sometimes that player is on the offensive line, a position group that everyone agrees is the most important on the field but one that only ever gets noticed if they fuck up.
And sometimes, that player is a 6’4”, 270-lb. monster whom no one can block without being worse for wear afterwards. Myles Garrett won’t win the MVP, but in my opinion? If the rest of the season plays out how it has the first six games for the Browns? He absolutely should get MASSIVE consideration to do so. Granted, a football season is by definition a small sample size, and six games out of 17 is minuscule. Still though, it’s hard to deny the impact Garrett has had on a team that probably shouldn’t be anywhere near sniffing distance of a division lead.