Honesty is generally considered to be a pretty much universally positive quality to have. Hustle and drive are, too. A lot of people might of one or the other, but not everyone does. Potential first-overall draft pick Myles Garrett more or less admitted that he is more in column A on this one than he is in Column B during his media session at the Combine.
Many players were asked a question in some form of, essentially, “do you ever take plays off”, and the general answer is no. Garrett chose to speak for the collective when he said that “nobody is 100 percent every play”.
The full quote, as provided by Scott Patsko of Cleveland.com, started out with him saying, “I know I’m getting after the ball when I can”, before adding, “sometimes I’m not 100 percent running down out there but I’m going to get after the passer or trying to run down a running back. Just trying to do what I can to make a play.
Nobody is 100 percent every play, you know, eight, nine plays down the drive. Sometimes you do look back at it and day ‘dang, I could have gave more effort there or I loafed it a little’. But you work on those things’”.
The reality is that Garrett is probably closer to the truth than many would like to admit. Virtually every player, if not literally every player, has some plays in which they do not give full effort for whatever reason or another, perhaps to conserve himself for a bigger play that might come his way on third down when a run goes off to the opposite side of the field.
But you generally don’t want to hear a player, particularly somebody that you might be taking with the top pick in the draft, essentially talking about taking plays off, although that was already a narrative that has followed him into the draft process, so it’s not exactly new territory.
Certainly, if the Browns intend to draft Garrett, this comment is not going to stop them from doing so, nor was his joke that he wanted the Cowboys to trade up with the Browns to take him—even if there was probably a lot of truth to that as well.
What I take away from the total body of his answer is that he does recognize that it has been a point of criticism for him and he did acknowledge that it is something to be worked on. I wouldn’t imagine that his motor is going to be an issue on the NFL level. Which would be a shame if he is playing in Cleveland against the Steelers twice a year.
