If you were owner of the Cleveland Browns (you, yes you) and the best player on your team, Pro Bowler Myles Garrett, who is actually one of the best players in the history of the NFL, wanted to meet with you. What would you do?
A) Meet with him. It’s Myles Freaking Garrett.
B) Meet with him. It’s Myles Freaking Garrett.
C) Meet with him. It’s. Myles. Freaking. Garrett.
D) All of the above.
If you (you, yes you) owned the Browns, the answer would be the last one. Because you’re not an idiot.
But Browns owner Jimmy Haslam apparently feels differently. In what is one of the most confounding stories of the week, month, year, decade, Garrett, as first reported by the NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero on Friday, and confirmed by ESPN and others, reached out to meet with Haslam and, according to those reports, the owner declined.
There are a million reasons why Haslam could have declined and none of them are likely valid. This is Ownership 101. If your player wants to meet with you, especially one of Garrett’s caliber, you just do it. If you want to have agents or lawyers present well, okay, whatever, but what you don’t do is decline.
Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com reported that Haslam told Garrett he should speak with Andrew Berry, the team’s general manager. That’s even worse. Haslam was slouching off Garrett onto the GM. If Haslam wanted to enforce some sort of chain of command, well, no. Just no. There’s no chain of command when it comes to Garrett if he wants to speak with the owner of the team.
The Browns and Garrett are dug in over the player’s trade request. He wants to leave. The Browns say they won’t trade him. Would a conversation have changed things? Probably not but it couldn’t hurt. But also, Garrett deserves that audience. He’s the team’s No. 1 overall pick from the 2017 draft. He has 102.5 career sacks.
Last year was his seventh straight double-digit sack season. He’s had four consecutive seasons with 14 or more sacks. He has earned five straight Pro Bowl bids, has received four career first-team All-Pro honors, and is a former NFL Defensive Player of the Year. He will skip into the Hall of Fame and he’s still relatively young at 29.
There are simply almost no players on Planet Earth like Garrett.
Most of all, Garrett commands respect not just in that locker room, but around the NFL. I promise you players on both the Browns and across the league heard about this news and didn’t understand why Haslam was taking that approach.
Haslam could have at least attempted to deescalate it by meeting with Garrett. Instead, Haslam made it worse.
When Garrett first requested a trade from the team, he issued a heartfelt statement: ‘As a kid dreaming of the NFL, all I focused on was the ultimate goal of winning a Super Bowl − and that goal fuels me today more than ever. My love for the community of Northeast Ohio and the incredible fanbase of the Cleveland Browns has made this one of the toughest decisions of my life. These past eight years have shaped me into the man that I am today.
‘While I’ve loved calling this city my home, my desire to win and compete on the biggest stages won’t allow me to be complacent. The goal was never to go from Cleveland to Canton, it has always been to compete for and win a Super Bowl.’
In other words, Garrett requested a trade because he doesn’t think the Browns can compete for a Super Bowl.
Moves like the one Haslam did shows Garrett might be right.
