Pro Football Rumors
It had been a while since the Browns had felt the lows felt in 2024. Since Cleveland drafted Baker Mayfield No. 1 overall in 2018, the team had either hovered around .500 or made the playoffs in every season. After one such playoff berth in 2023, an effort at back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1988 and ’89 produced a 3-14 campaign brought Cleveland crashing back to Earth. Continued struggles and injury issues for Deshaun Watson and a trio of backup quarterbacks resulted in the league’s lowest-scoring offense and lowest win total.
Kevin Stefanski hasn’t, somehow shockingly, become the NFL’s ninth-longest-tenured head coach for no reason, though. Following a season of turmoil, change was a certainty. So many contradictory headlines flew out of Cleveland this offseason concerning so many different, important decisions — such as the future of the team’s defensive MVP or its four-way battle under center — that anything became possible. Fans won’t end up caring much about how many statements general manager Andrew Berry and Co. walked back, as long as the moves made this offseason lay a path forward for success.
Closing in on the final weeks of the franchise’s worst season since the winless 2017, one of several large stories in Cleveland’s offseason began as the team’s defensive star questioned the its long-term plan. Seeking answers from the top brass on how they would dig themselves out of this hole, Garrett dangled the threat of a trade request that would set the stage for the two-month saga.
Berry tried to calm the waters, assuring fans he had no plans on trading the former No. 1 overall pick and that his expectations were for Garrett to eventually retire a Brown. A conversation between the two seemed to build some goodwill, with Garrett coming away from the meeting posing the issue of how they might best capitalize on all the talent surrounding him on the team right then.
Part of Garrett’s concern also centered on him having outplayed the five-year, $125MM contract he had signed in 2020. The threat of a trade request began to shift from concern for team success to concern for a new contract. With two years remaining on the four-time first-team All-Pro’s deal, Berry had to judiciously tell the media something was in the works without promising a new contract, at the same time continuing to assure fans that he did not intend to trade Garrett.
At that point, Garrett abandoned any pretense about team success and requested a trade, asserting that an aggressive offseason from the front office would no longer do...
