Nearly two months to the day after the Browns surprised everyone by trading defensive end Myles Garrett to the Rams, Btowns owner Jimmy Haslam addressed the move in a Friday press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was Andrew\u2019s decision,\u201d Haslam told reporters, referring to G.M. Andrew Berry. \u201cI don\u2019t know what Andrew shared with you yesterday or in the past, that\u2019s something that \u2014 the conversations we\u2019ve had for about a while before it was announced, and the Rams were a good partner there and kept it quiet. But, a decision like that, ownership is going to be involved, but it\u2019s Andrew\u2019s decision, Andrew\u2019s recommendation \u2014 in this case, ownership left it there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haslam was asked why he accepted Berry\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, one, I think we got a really good player back, and I think you saw him today \u2014 a really good player who\u2019s 25 years old and still on his rookie contract, so that\u2019s the biggest reason,\u201d Haslam said. \u201cAnd then we picked up a one, a two and a three, and I think we all realize the three years we didn\u2019t have number one picks due to the Deshaun [Watson] trade \u2014 one of those years I don\u2019t think we even had a second \u2014 and the value of those picks, as we\u2019ve proved the last two years, are tremendous. Myles [Garrett] is an unbelievable player. I was thinking the other night \u2014 Jim Brown, Joe Thomas, Myles Garrett \u2014 they\u2019re all first-ballot Hall of Famers, world-class people, and so it was not an easy decision, but we\u2019ve made it, we\u2019re moving on and excited about Jared [Verse] and excited about those three draft picks.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a surprising change of position by Haslam and the Browns after the 2025 season, one in which Garrett set the single-season sack record and was named the NFL\u2019s defensive player of the year.<\/p>\n
But, really, what did it do for the Browns? They won five games.<\/p>\n
Adding draft picks is a plus, given the draft picks that were squandered in the Watson trade. Those picks become cheap, young players who can (if drafted and developed properly) become key, long-term contributors.<\/p>\n
It was still a stunning shift by the organization. In 2025, Haslam said the team never gave the possibility of trading Garrett a \u201cserious thought<\/a>,\u201d even though he demanded a trade publicly in early February and wanted to meet with Haslam in early March. (Haslam declined to do so<\/a>.)<\/p>\n A year later, the Browns did much more than give it a serious thought. They arguably could have gotten even more for him in 2025, without having to sign him to a new, market-setting deal that made Garrett decide to stick around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly two months to the day after the Browns surprised everyone by trading defensive end Myles Garrett to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-796846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}