Cleveland's front office has spent three years performing increasingly desperate CPR on the Deshaun Watson experiment. On Sunday, they finally called time of death.
The Browns have traded Myles Garrett—the franchise's best defensive player since its 1999 return, a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, and the only reason opposing offensive coordinators bothered to scheme for Cleveland at all—to the Los Angeles Rams. The deal reportedly sends Garrett west for a package of draft picks, the exact composition of which will be dissected endlessly but ultimately matters less than what the trade represents: an admission that the Watson gamble failed catastrophically, and that the organization is now willing to strip itself to the studs rather than continue the charade.
What the Rams get
The best edge rusher in football, full stop. Garrett has recorded double-digit sacks in six of his seven NFL seasons, won the 2023 Defensive Player of the Year award, and consistently grades as the league's most disruptive pass rusher by virtually every advanced metric. At 30, he has perhaps three elite seasons remaining—exactly the window the Rams need as Matthew Stafford enters his mid-forties and Sean McVay's championship core ages out.
Los Angeles has operated for years under the "draft picks are currency, not assets" philosophy, and this move fits perfectly. The Rams' defensive line was already respectable; with Garrett, it becomes terrifying. Opposing quarterbacks in the NFC West should update their life insurance policies.
What Cleveland admits
The Browns gave Watson a fully guaranteed $230 million contract in March 2022. He has started a combined 19 games since, battled injuries, faced ongoing legal scrutiny, and performed like a middling starter when healthy. The team went 11-6 in 2023 largely because of Garrett's dominance and a defense that masked offensive dysfunction. Since then, the trajectory has been unambiguously downward.
Trading Garrett means Cleveland has accepted that the current roster cannot compete, that Watson's contract is an albatross they must simply absorb, and that the only path forward involves accumulating picks and hoping to draft the next Garrett—a task that took them the first overall selection to accomplish the first time.
Our take
This is the correct move for both franchises, which is the rarest kind of blockbuster. The Rams remain committed to winning now with an aging but still-dangerous core; the Browns have finally stopped pretending they can do the same. Cleveland's fans deserve better than the Watson era has delivered, and while trading away a generational talent stings, it at least signals organizational clarity after years of delusion. Garrett gets a chance to chase a ring. The Browns get a chance to start over. Sometimes the best trades are the ones where everyone involved admits what they already knew.
