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When will it end? No, seriously, when does the long line of Cleveland Browns embarrassments end?
Because now that they’ve shipped off Myles Garrett, it won’t be ending anytime soon.
In exchange for trading the best player in franchise history, or at least of the last 50 years, Cleveland brings back the promising Jared Verse to his home state of Ohio, and the Los Angeles Rams’ first-round pick in 2027, their second-round pick in 2028, and their third in 2029.
Gee, Andrew Berry, very creative. I imagine the process was something like “yeah, let’s just go down the line of years and picks, and maybe they’ll give them to us. Let’s just kick the can down the road.”
Kicking the can down the road has been a staple of Cleveland football for a very long time.
First, no matter how promising Verse is and no matter how well he can develop in Cleveland, he will never touch the level of Garrett. The Rams knew that; they made this trade in a heartbeat, and any other team would have.
The argument behind this trade is that Garrett, in all his tremendous talent and game-wrecking ability, wasn’t contributing to winning games in Cleveland. Therefore, the trade becomes a move that sets up the Browns’ future in terms of draft capital and a defensive talent that is five years younger than Garrett.
To break that one down, I’m not really sure how the logic tracks. Trade a struggling team’s best player, who just happens to be the best player in the league, and they’ll be better for it in the long run?
Garrett’s age has been thrown around as another positive for this trade, that he’s only getting older. Well, the man just set the single-season sack record, and this league is about to expand to 18 games in the near future, and you can bet all the money in the world that he’ll be trying to reset it again. Additionally, this is also a player who is famously known for being in incredible shape, and although Garrett has been subjected to a few nagging injuries here and there, he’s not coming off any recent and career-altering injuries.
That’s reserved for Cleveland’s projected starting quarterback.
This type of head-shaking, nonsensical logic has plagued the Browns franchise for far too long. Furthermore, is the franchise and ownership group not tired of embarrassment? Are they not exhausted from hearing both Cleveland fans and outside voices constantly lamenting how terrible it is to be a Brown?
All the endless memes on X, from every considerable publication or popular media company, begin to pile up eventually. Eventually, if every armchair GM or bloviator on ESPN can see that what the franchise is doing isn’t working, eventually you might consider a change.
Another point of contention is the fact that the Browns didn’t really need to do this. Sure, they are coming off another stinker of a season, but trading Garrett won’t make it better. I feel like I keep screaming that both the front office and the sectors of the fanbase that approve of this deal that they cannot see the forest for the trees.
Sure, the trade sets up developments for the future, but Cleveland has been down this road again, and again, and again. Sooner or later, the franchise has to put its foot down and try to win instead of winning a game of analytical 4-D chess that always ends up in a rebuild.
The only way that this trade doesn’t morph into another disappointing, famously bad move that alienates the entire fanbase à la the Deshaun Watson trade is that Verse and whoever emerges from the draft picks pan out. The 2027 draft class is supposed to be one of the best we’ve ever seen on paper, and the Browns now have two selections in said class.
Leading me back to my point in the first-relying on this franchise to put their cleats on the right way is a challenge, let alone nailing draft picks. So, yeah, sure, hooray draft picks!
Enjoy that when Garrett helps Matthew Stafford and the Rams to their second Super Bowl this decade.
