CLEVELAND — The single-season NFL sack record remains something Browns All-Pro Myles Garrett is one sack shy of breaking. All Garrett has is one game left to do so, which has done nothing to minimize his confidence it’ll fall.
“Absolutely,” Garrett said. “Why shouldn’t I be? Four more quarters, 60 more minutes. However you want to draw it up, it’ll get done.”
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers yet again avoided being put into Garrett’s “graveyard” on a rainy, windy day in Cleveland. However, Garrett and the Browns managed to put Rodgers and the Steelers in the win column with a 13-6 victory.
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The win came on a day where it would’ve been easy to pack things up for the Browns, who improve to 4-12. Instead, they spoiled a chance for a rival to clinch the AFC North, while adding to Pittsburgh’s recent Cleveland misery, dropping the Steelers to 1-6-1 in The Land since 2018.
This by a Browns team that was only really contending for the No. 1 overall pick in April’s draft, something that no longer is within reach. Not that anyone in the locker room, most notably the 2017 No. 1 overall pick, cares about right now.
“No one signed up to lose,” Garrett said. “No one signed up to lose at all. So I don’t care what the situation is with the record. Not a single one of us want to line up and lay down to a team or a man that’s in front of us. No, we got put here in this place or selected, whatever it was — drafted to come here and win. Has it always been that way? No, but I’ll be damned if I’m just going to go out there and lay down to another team just because we want some more draft picks. That’s not me.”
It’s not left guard Joel Bitonio, either. Bitonio made his 177th career start on Sunday, all despite a list of injuries that run the gamut from back to knee to any number of other ones.
Bitonio is truly the last man standing, at least when it comes to the offensive line. He’s the only opening-day starting offensive lineman to start all 16 games to this point, and with Wyatt Teller re-aggravating his calf injury against the Steelers, will likely be the only one to start in Week 18 as well.
That’s not done, in his mind, in order to just show enough to lose a close game. It’s about getting the feeling that existed in the locker room after Sunday’s win.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, I do not blame the fans for thinking about the future and everything like that,” Bitonio said. “But as players in this locker room, every time you go on the field, it’s a resume, and this is a real sport. This is the NFL. You’ve got to put your best foot forward when you go out there and you’ve got to compete. … Maybe the fans want to have some fan fiction. Maybe the upstairs (front office) is hoping or something like that, but I know the players and the coaches fight for every win, and every time you go on the field, it’s a resume builder. So I don’t think it’s crossed anybody in here’s mind, but we’re going to try to win this game, try to win next week as well.”
Bitonio knows his days in the NFL are numbered, maybe even down to the last week. He understands the committment being made to so many of the young rookies who were part of last April’s draft class who have taken on critical roles this season.
Those rookies, the Browns hope, are central to changing the organization into a winner. Bitonio believes the only way you change the organization into a winner is by not tolerating losing, regardless of what it means for draft positioning.
“For this team, there’s a lot of young guys,” Bitonio said. “You look at Carson (Schwesinger). You look at Mason (Graham), Shedeur (Sanders), Dylan Sampson, Harold Fannin with that touchdown catch. These guys are trying to build a culture for the future, and to go out there and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going to lose our last couple games to get a better draft pick,’ it would never cross a player’s mind.”
The next exhibit may have been veteran defensive tackle Shelby Harris. Harris, who came into the league the same year as Bitonio in 2014, knows the future is as cloudy for himself as a free agent at the end of the season as anyone.
There was Harris, in one of the biggest moments of the game, managed to bat down a Rodgers pass on fourth-and-10 from the Pittsburgh 20 with 1:58 remaining. That was despite being dragged down in a bear hug by a Steelers offensive lineman.
That’s not the effort of someone craving the No. 1 pick. Then again, Harris questions anyone who would go in with such a mindset.
“Obviously not athletes, because honestly, if you are an athlete, you would never ask another athlete that type of question,” Harris said. “Because we go out there and compete every chance we get and it’s not in our blood to lay down and just be like, oh, you know, get a better draft pick. No, I’m out there fighting. Because look at it like this, it is me versus them, it’s one-on-one, it’s man-versus-man.
“And if I sat there and caved, how’s that going to look on me? Because that means I’m letting him push me back. I’m letting him manhandle me. And that’s just not going to happen. So there’s no such thing as tanking in the NFL because it’s a physical one-on-one, like, it’s a lot of one-on-ones in this sport and nobody’s just going to let themselves get their a** kicked.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Browns push back on quest for No. 1 pick. ‘No one signed up to lose’
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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