Preseason hype had Myles Garrett playing ‘off the leash’ against Mayfield, Panthers
Myles Garrett admitted with a smile that no early play or sequence or score set the tone on Sunday.
That was settled a long time ago.
“The tone was set with the attitude of some of the guys on the other side,” the Browns’ hallmark defensive linemen told reporters after notching a 26-24 win over the Panthers on the road. “So we were just ready to go out there and finally put things to bed.”
“It had us a bit off the leash,” he added.
It had been a long preseason for both the Browns and the Panthers. And it had largely been shaped around a single story: Baker Mayfield, the quarterback the Browns traded to Carolina, was playing his old team.
And, of course, Mayfield wanted to win and reportedly had colorful words to express that.
However trite and predictable it all was, one of the best defensive linemen in the NFL let it fuel his fire. Garrett finished with two sacks, two quarterback hits, a pass deflection, a forced fumble and three tackles for loss.
It appeared to fuel the rest of the team, too. Carolina only earned 261 yards of total offense — 75 of which was bundled into one fourth-quarter toss from Mayfield to Robbie Anderson with six minutes left in the game — and Cleveland gained 35 yards in the last minute to set up a game-ending 58-yard field goal from Cade York that would’ve sailed true from 70.
Garrett talked to Mayfield on the field postgame, he said, and did so because the former teammates acknowledged each other as “two competitors.”
“I don’t think I ever had a problem with him as a football player,” he said of Mayfield, who played for the Browns for four years and even led them to a playoff win in 2020. “He was playing injured, and that earns a lot of respect in my eyes as well, and him being able to lead those kinds of drives, we’ve seen it before against multiple teams. I just didn’t want to be on the opposite end of that.”
Said Mayfield on his and Garrett’s postgame exchange: “He just said, ‘Keep going.’ ”
Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski told reporters that he didn’t talk to Mayfield after the game on the field, but he said he thought Mayfield played well.
“I thought he fought like crazy like he always does,” the coach said. “And that’s a good football team.”
There were troves of other stories from the Browns press room that made Sunday a special day for Cleveland.
Jacoby Brissett, the former N.C. State quarterback who has played for four different teams since entering the league in 2016, teared up when describing the emotions of getting another chance to start in this league. “Playing in the NFL is a highlight every time,” he said, “and that is why I think I am so emotional.”
York, the fourth-round draft pick who nailed the game-winner (along with three other field goals), saw a comment he made preseason come true on Sunday. “Just get me to the 40,” he told Brissett a few months ago. Brissett did. And York delivered.
There was more, too. The stifling of Christian McCaffrey. The emergence of defensive back John Johnson III. The strength of Nick Chubb (22 rushes for 141 yards) and Kareem Hunt (11 attempts for 46 yards and a touchdown). The first season-opening win for the Browns in 17 years — made possible by a Panthers team that has lost eight in a row since November 2021.
But all said, the Mayfield-versus-his-old-team story wouldn’t be denied of its influence on Sunday.
“Obviously, there were the two plays where Myles sacked Baker that were obviously big plays in the game,” Panthers head coach Matt Rhule said. “But I thought Baker just kept battling, just kept attacking and in the end made the plays that we needed to make make to get back in the game.”
Said Mayfield: “Everybody made this out to be their Super Bowl, but despite what everybody is going to make this, there are 16 more games. ... We are going to flush this. We are going to learn from it. And we are going to get better from it.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 6:09 PM.
