Myles Garrett is better than T.J. Watt, ESPN once again recently “confirmed”, with the Cleveland Browns star defender placing first on the outlet’s list of the NFL’s best edge rushers. Jeremy Fowler polled executives, coaches, and scouts to rank positions, and Garrett apparently emerged as the clear victor.
“Garrett is now in Tier 1 by himself, earning 70% of the first-place votes”, Fowler writes. Each voter selected its top 10 players at each position, so that means only 30% of respondents listed anybody other than Garrett as the top edge rusher on their ballot. Which is astonishing, given the existence of T.J. Watt—and Micah Parsons and Nick Bosa, for that matter.
“If you don’t double team him, he’s going to f—ing kill you”, Fowler quoted one coordinator as saying of Myles Garrett. According to ESPN’s own metrics, Garrett faced a double team 29 percent of the time, second-most behind Parsons’ 35 percent. Watt faced among the fewest double teams of accomplished edge rushers at just 14 percent.
Notably, Fowler writes that Garrett’s Defensive Player of the Year Award win “earned him credibility among voters”. Still, he added that “many don’t consider 2023 any sort of breakthrough”—and it wasn’t. He quotes one executive as saying that Garrett simply got more help last year.
Myles Garrett posted just 42 tackles last season, the lowest of his career when playing more than 10 games. He did register 17 tackles for loss, 14 sacks, 30 hits, four forced fumbles, and three batted passes. Yet others compare to him favorably from a purely statistical viewpoint.
The aforementioned T.J. Watt, for example, registered 68 tackles with a league-leading 19 sacks. He recorded 19 tackles for loss, 36 hits, four forced fumbles, an interception, eight passes defensed, and a touchdown. And he finished second to Garrett in the Defensive Player of the Year voting. If only he’d won more of his pass rushes while drawing double teams that yielded no result.
To his credit, Fowler suggests that Garrett created six pressures last season that led to interceptions, which, if true, is a significant achievement. Such a feat is a team achievement, though, and requires a bad pass and a defender making a catch. He doesn’t mention interceptions created by any other defenders.
The voters did rank Watt second behind Garrett and in front of Parsons, followed by Bosa and Maxx Crosby. The top five feels right, and you may juggle the order as you see fit. At a certain level of performance, we’re splitting hairs.
Both T.J. Watt and Myles Garrett are game-wreckers, and their teams shape schemes around them. Offensive coordinators certainly spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for them. Bengals QB Joe Burrow understands the unique challenges of preparing to play Watt, though.
