Getty Defensive end Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns.
The NFL’s regular-season awards have often been a source of debate, though not many winners have been contested as hotly as Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns, who earned the title of Defensive Player of the Year last week.
Garrett has been one of the league’s elite pass-rushers for several seasons, with five Pro Bowls and five All-Pro selections over his seven-year NFL career. On February 8, Garrett added a DPOY trophy to his proverbial mantle. He won the honor over linebackers T.J. Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Micah Parsons of the Dallas Cowboys, who finished in second and third place, respectively.
Contention followed in the always-toxic realm that is social media, where Pittsburgh fans claimed the voters snubbed Watt by affording him just 11 first-place votes while Garrett received 23. Watt also took to the internet with a five-word response to that assertion.
“Nothing I’m not used to,” Watt said.
But the 24-year-old Parsons isn’t having any of it. The crux of the argument against Garrett is that he finished the season with 14 sacks (7th in the NFL) while Watt led the league with 19 sacks. However, Parsons argued that traditional counting statistics hardly tell the whole story and encouraged fans to watch tape and avoid merely reading box scores.
And the Dallas linebacker doubled down on that take in an interview with Zach Gelb of CBS Sports Friday.
“I’m not a sore loser,” Parsons said. “I thought it should have went to Myles if not me, and I said that publicly, and it’s as simple as that. Myles — look at the Titans game alone. No offense, but T.J. played the Titans. Did you see two tight ends following T.J. Watt? Like they’re following him all across the line [like they did with Garrett]?”
Micah Parsons Asserts Myles Garrett Far More Dominant Than TJ Watt
GettyDallas Cowboys star linebacker Micah Parsons.
And Parsons didn’t stop there.
“People can say whatever they want, but the film does not lie,” the Cowboys linebacker told Gelb. “His presence is way more dominant than T.J. Watt, and that’s just the reality of it.”
Parsons pointed out advanced analytics that factor in pass-rush win rate and double-team rate, which show the impact a player has on an offense during plays that he doesn’t actually record a sack or a tackle for loss or the like.
Garrett was second in the NFL with a pass-rush win rate of 30.5%. He was also double-teamed more than all but two players this season, facing multiple blockers on 28.8% of plays, per ESPN. The Browns also fielded the league’s top-rated defense in yards allowed at 267 per game, and Garrett was far and away the best player on that unit.
“I know the focus is on sack numbers,” Browns general manager Andrew Berry told Jake Trotter of ESPN. “That really doesn’t tell the whole story. … He played at a really high level for us down the stretch.”
Micah Parsons Takes Shot at Pro Sports Culture That Puts Down Accomplishments of Greats Like Myles Garrett
GettyCleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett.
Parsons said he has no issue with Garrett, or even with Watt. For him, the problem is more about a culture around sports where greatness can’t be appreciated fully in the face of competitiveness.
There’s no beef at all. One thing I hate about the NFL community and NBA community, we just hate when someone else wins.
When I lost to T.J., I did not go in and say, “I got snubbed.” I just said, “I’m going to go to work.” When I lost to Nick Bosa the year after that, I did not say, “I got snubbed.” I just said, “I’m going to work.”
The biggest mistake in people is saying that someone is not deserving. Who are you to say someone is not deserving of an award of that magnitude?