In what was one of the most head-scratching and simply irresponsible moves a potential top overall pick could ever do before the NFL Draft, projected top overall pick Myles Garrett may have talked himself out of being in play for the Cleveland Browns.
Garrett, a 6’5, 269-pound edge rusher from Texas A&M, made a personal plea in a 20-second video to his home-state Dallas Cowboys to trade veteran QB Tony Romo and picks to the Browns, so that Dallas can take him in the draft.
The video message, which came hours after it was reported that he will not attend the 2017 NFL Draft in Philadelphia and watch it from his home in Texas, is going to cause potential teams besides the Browns to consider him for the top overall pick.
Combine this, along with comments such as not wishing to play in cold weather, could cause teams such as the aforementioned Browns, Chicago Bears to reconsider him entirely.
Heck, for the Browns, he might even pull an Eli Manning and simply refuse to play for the team entirely.
Manning, who was infamously drafted No.1 overall by the now Los Angeles Chargers when they were down in San Diego, refused to hold up his Chargers jersey and draft day cap before forcing a draft-day deal to the New York Giants back in 2004.
Obviously, the rest is history and the Giants clearly got the better end of that deal in seeing Manning win two Super Bowls and two Super Bowl MVP’s at the expense of this generation’s G.O.A.T. in five-time Super Bowl champion in Tom Brady.
In the case of Cleveland, Garrett could either be the next J.J. Watt or Courtney Brown—didn’t mean to make my fellow Dawgs shudder there!!—but while Garrett has potentially elite twitch-level talent, and would immediately upgrade a horrid pass rush, some fans who were already on the fence about him due to his injury-laden season seem to want Alabama’s Jonathan Allen, Stanford’s Solomon Thomas or even Derek Barnett out of Tennessee anyway.
While Garrett may have grown up a fan of Dallas, to open plead for another team to trade up to grab you, shows a lack of competitive will, maturity, professionalism and utter class in general.
Hopefully, if the Browns are smart, they either pass on him entirely and watch him free fall—thus hurting his draft stock—or take him No.1 overall and sit him for a year out of spite to show him how big boy professional football is done, as this is the NFL and that he isn’t in College Station anymore.
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