What would Myles Garrett do for the Buffalo Bills’ defense?

The obvious answer is: A lot.

I’ll be candid with y’all. I know many of you are less interested in the Super Bowl this year, but I’m waiting for that landmark event to pass so I can truly transition to Buffalo Bills “offseason” stuff.

In the meantime, that doesn’t mean we have nothing to talk about in these analytical halls. The recent news that defensive end Myles Garrett has requested a trade away from the Cleveland Browns has a lot of Bills Mafia gleefully hoping general manager Brandon “Magic” Beane can make it happen.

Let’s raise the hype level with a few GIFs of Garrett in action to answer the question no one needs answered. What would Myles Garrett do for the Bills’ defense?

How is that NOT holding?

I believe we all know the answer to my question already, so let’s take a moment to discuss the NFL rule book. Because... why not? A common thing I find is people asking why offensive holding isn’t called all the time. On the surface this looks like a good example of it, right?

Wrong. If a defender uses a rip technique, then technically it’s not holding. I can go into more of the nuance on this part of the rule, but this is a correct no-call. This happens a lot more than I believe people realize.

What I really want to focus in on here with Garrett is that often this “not-holding” action does lead to a win by the offensive lineman, and here Garrett seemed mildly inconvenienced. He sure wasn’t stopped — a trend I want you to pay attention to as well as the impact. Garrett hit the quarterback hard, which is something I’ll wrap up in the conclusions.

Myles Garrett using finesse

Garrett shows off some finesse with excellent hand-fighting and incredible timing on the spin move. I have the pause there to ask you to pay attention to the trend I already asked you to pay attention to above.

Myles Garrett is demonstrative even in SLO-MO!

This is almost a combination of the first two GIFs. A dip to his left to avoid the chip was followed by a swat to clear the hands of the tackle. Next up was the not-quite-holding situation we saw in GIF one. Garrett went through all that and still finished the play.

Stunt it!

While it’s great to have an interior lineman who can wreck things, it’s also great to have a defensive end who can bounce in on a stunt and clean up. Garrett’s speed during this play made this work — and, once again, look at how he finished.