Myles Garrett may have requested a trade from the Cleveland Browns, but that was never going to mean he was actually leaving.
As Bomani Jones put it on Monday, NFL players like Garrett don’t “demand” trades anymore — they ask nicely. And Garrett did just that. Despite Browns owner Jimmy Haslam reportedly refusing to meet with him, the two sides eventually reached an agreement that made Garrett the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league at $40 million per year.
But in Rob Parker’s book, that makes the 29-year-old pass rusher a “fraud.”
“He was huffing and puffing, but he didn’t blow down the Browns’ house,” Parker began on Monday’s The Odd Couple.
And Parker didn’t mince words after hearing Garrett’s post-trade request remarks.
“I don’t know what you think, but that’s when somebody’s fraudulent,” Parker said. “You got to call him a ‘fraud.’ It’s one thing to say you just want out; you want to be traded. But to say it’s about winning, you always dreamt about winning, and that’s what it’s about, and never thought about Canton from Cleveland… And they come along for money for you, and then all of a sudden, all of those words really don’t matter because they never were.”
Parker suggested Garrett’s trade request was little more than a negotiating tactic. But for Cleveland, the real problem isn’t Myles Garrett — it’s a roster built to go nowhere.
“I think the Cleveland Browns continue to make bad decisions,” Parker says. “It is a terrible decision to re-sign or give him an extension at this kind of money. He’s a great player — that isn’t even the issue. The issue is you’re in last place. You can finish in last place with him or without him. You can. You had him last year, and you finished in last place. And you got a bad quarterback [Deshaun Watson], who has a bad contract, and how do you get better when you give him that kind of a deal?”
That’s less cap space for the Browns to improve their roster elsewhere, and as Adam Schefter reported, Cleveland appears hesitant to draft a quarterback with the No. 2 pick. Penn State’s Abdul Carter could be in play if the Titans go with Cam Ward or Travis Hunter.
“If you have Deshaun Watson and you have to stick with him, why don’t you do this? Say he’s just gonna be a stopgap until we can get from underneath that contract,” says Parker. “‘Let’s go ahead, trade Myles Garrett, get some picks or whatever, develop them,and by the time we get out of quarterback purgatory with Deshaun Watson, then we’ll have a couple of players who are in their second or third years, and they can replace Myles Garrett… I think this was a mistake.”
Parker made his stance clear: If Garrett truly cared about winning, he wouldn’t have cashed in to stay with a franchise stuck in neutral. Instead, he made the same mistake countless stars have—taking the money while pretending it’s about something more.
“He got on his soapbox about winning,” Parker added. “He signed his death certificate in Cleveland that he’s not gonna win. So, it wasn’t about winning. It was about getting the most money. That’s all I’m saying. In that case, he was fraudulent. He was a fraud. He sold one thing to people… You know what some people do to win? Some people take a discount. They sacrifice money to go to a better situation, and that’s why I don’t buy him.”