Mercenary Mode
One of the hardest things for a fan is to have to choose between rooting for a player or rooting for a team. With some situations, it’s easy; most Browns fans chose team over player when it came to Deshaun Watson. The name on the front of the jersey was there before him, and will continue to be there whenever he is playing for someone else, crossing fingers that it’s as soon as next year. The flip side of the coin is the decision to not bring back Nick Chubb. There has never been a player more Cleveland-coded than one Nicholas Jamaal Chubb, and the thought of watching NFL games with Chubb not in orange and brown turns the stomach. Sure, the front office reformed the running back room with one good draft and Quinshon Judkins is the platonic ideal of who would play Nick Chubb in the Nick Chubb biopic, but it won’t be the same and many fans will hold it over the franchise’s head for years to come, especially if Chubb signs elsewhere and shows what he has left in the tank. But that brings us to the biggest issue and the possibly the hardest “team vs player” decision this upcoming season.
This week, voluntary OTAs kicked off and there was a noticeably large person missing from the defensive side of the ball. Myles Garrett posted a pic to his IG of him in Japan, as the caption stated, looking for real estate in a shirt that looks like he bought it from Gap Kids. He was there for Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards on Sunday and was seen photogged with a new possibly love interest, and I can already feel you rolling your eyes as you read this wait please focus up it’s important. So here’s where the river forks: should Myles Garrett be in attendance for the OTAs despite the fact that they are voluntary and the presence of a player with Garrett’s veteran status is unneccesary? I say yes, but I’m aware that I’m in the minority. And yes, I’m aware that voluntary OTAs is mostly for the primary installation of packages and is more pressing for rookies and younger players to show out for coaches than those that have 5+ years in with the team. It should be mentioned that David Njoku, Joel Bitonio, and others were not in attendance, but they also do not have the stature of Garrett, nor were they as flashy with their absence.
Garrett’s offseason was rife with issues. He near immediately asked for a trade away from the only franchise he’s played for, citing quotes made by the general manager as reasons for wanting to move along. It sullied his name with fans of not only his but of the team and NFL, especially as he continued on through the summer. General Manager Andrew Berry held firm that he was not going to swap the swashbuckling sackmaker, and eventually it came to a head when Garrett’s team let leak that a meeting with ownership was asked for but not received, as owner Jimmy Haslam told him to talk to Berry instead. It was the leverage that Garrett’s team needed to make it look like the team was being unreasonable, despite the fact that it was the right move by ownership to say “it’s not my job to have those discussions, talk to the guy who I hired to have those discussions”. Garrett signed the biggest non-QB contract of all time, made nice with the media and cozied back up with the Browns like nothing happened. However, the imprint on the fanbase is still there and is still relevant, and when he was not present with the team as they start their offseason work, it blew up on social media. The player many thought was different, with his love for dinosaurs, D&D, poetry, has shown it’s all about the money, the next step, the glitz and glam for him.
It would be great if Garrett was at voluntary OTAs, showing the next crop of players what it means to be an NFL player, how to put in the work even when it’s not required. It’s something relatively small that Myles could do to show he was actually bought into the team, that he was not in “mercenary mode”, collecting checks like he collects QB hits. It encompasses bigger problems within the Browns’ locker room: a lack of leadership, of culture, that the hard-nosed mentality of “we work harder than you and we will show it” is gone. At the end of the day, it truly is fine if Myles wants to be “more than just a football player”, that he worries more about his future accolades and endorsement deals than helping the next squad he’s about to spend 17 games banging bodies with. It just helps a lot of fans make the decision on whether or not to root for player or team if they have to.
