Myles Garrett records his 19th sack, eyes NFL record

Myles Garrett walked off the field with another quarterback in his wake, another game where he was the one reason Brown’s fans stayed in their seats until the final whistle, even in an 8 to 26 loss to the 49ers. The season has been a grind for Cleveland, the kind of year where the offense sputters, the injuries pile up, and every Sunday feels a little heavier than the last, but Garrett has turned that weight into fuel, exploding off the edge snap after snap, chasing a record that once felt untouchable.

Coming into this stretch, he had already set a new Browns single-season sack mark, clearing his own previous franchise records and pushing his total into territory no Cleveland defender had ever reached. The modern sack record belongs to Michael Strahan and T. J Watt at 22 and a half, and Garrett has carved that number into the heart of this season, sitting just three and a half sacks from tying it with five games still on the schedule after adding yet another takedown today. Every time he wins with that long arm stab or bends under a tackle like a sprinter leaning the curve, the math tilts more in his favor, one more hit, one more quarterback swallowed up, one step closer to history.​

In a league built on offense, Garrett has become appointment viewing on defense, stacking multi-sack games and stretches that even the record holders never matched. Analysts have noted that in recent weeks, he has rattled off sacks at a pace that surpasses any five-game run since the league started officially tracking the stat, the kind of dominant surge that forces coordinators to redesign entire game plans to slow him down. Yet even with chips, slides, double teams, he keeps finding daylight, keeps finding angles, keeps finding the quarterback.​

For Browns fans, that is the paradox of this year: the team has been a tough watch, the losses are stacking up, and the final scores like today‘s lopsided result in San Francisco serve as weekly reminders of how far there is to go. Still, every defensive series becomes a small event, a chance to see number ninety-five threaten the edge, to feel the crowd rise as he closes in, to wonder if this is the snap where he nudges closer to Strahan and Watt. In a bleak season, Garrett has become the storyline, the reason to turn the game on, the living proof that even in a lost year, greatness can still break through the gray of an Ohio winter and make every snap matter.

This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: Myles Garrett adds another sack today and his 19th of the season