Myles Garrett Sets NFL Single-Season Sack Record as Browns Beat Bengals in Week 18

CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow glanced left, then barely had time to look back to his right.

Myles Garrett was already there.

With just over five minutes remaining Sunday at Paycor Stadium, the Cleveland Browns defensive end exploded off the line, slipped past left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. and swallowed Burrow for a loss near midfield. Burrow turtled to the turf, the whistle blew and Garrett popped up to a swarm of teammates.

On the stat sheet, it was a 4-yard sack in the fourth quarter of a Week 18 game. On the league’s official ledger, it was something much bigger: sack No. 23, the most in a single NFL season since the league began tracking the statistic in 1982.

Garrett’s takedown of Burrow in Cleveland’s 20-18 win over the Cincinnati Bengals gave the 30-year-old the NFL’s single-season sack record, breaking the 22½ mark set by Michael Strahan with the New York Giants in 2001 and tied by T.J. Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2021.

“It was probably the best get-off I ever had,” Garrett said afterward. “I knew if I got a real one-on-one, I had to make it count.”

Record moment in a messy finale

The record came in the middle of a game the Browns had to scrap to win — and a season they could not salvage.

Cleveland finished 5-12, last in the AFC North, and did not score an offensive touchdown Sunday. The Browns’ only trips to the end zone came on a 97-yard interception return by linebacker Devin Bush and a 47-yard fumble return by cornerback Sam Webb. Rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders completed 11 of 22 passes for 111 yards, while Andre Szmyt’s 49-yard field goal as time expired provided the winning points.

The sack that will define this day arrived on a first-and-10 play with the Bengals driving and clinging to an 18-17 lead. Official play-by-play logs vary slightly on the exact time and yard line, but all place the snap around the 5-minute mark of the fourth quarter near the 50.

Garrett aligned wide over Brown, timed the snap and burst upfield. Brown got his hands on him, but Garrett dipped his shoulder and turned the corner. Burrow, seeing nothing downfield and with Garrett closing fast from his blind side, quickly went down to protect the ball.

Moments later, play was briefly paused as Garrett was recognized in-stadium as the new single-season sack leader, with teammates crowding around and Browns fans in the road stands cheering.

Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said he was unhappy with the stoppage coming in the middle of a late offensive drive.

“That’s not something I’m a fan of when we’re trying to go tempo,” Taylor said. “But that’s not my call.”

Garrett said the Bengals had made it as difficult as he expected all afternoon.

“It was everything I expected. It was so tough,” he said. “I don’t think I saw more than three singles on a real dropback the whole game.”

He made one of them count.

Years in the making

The record was years in the making. Garrett, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 draft out of Texas A&M, had already established himself as one of the league’s elite pass rushers. He entered Sunday with six consecutive seasons of at least 12 sacks and as the Browns’ all-time leader in the category.

He finished this season with 23.0 sacks, leading the league and setting a new high for a defender in the 17-game era. Through nine seasons, he has 125½ career sacks, more than any player has recorded before turning 30. He also has become one of only a handful of players with three games of at least four sacks.

According to team and league statistics, Garrett came into the game having sacked Burrow 11 times, tied with Lamar Jackson as the quarterback he had brought down most often. Sunday’s takedown adds at least one more to that total.

Garrett said he had been thinking about a season like this long before it happened.

“I set that goal three years ago for myself,” he said earlier this season. “I had a dream I had that written on my tape and I was going to get 25, and I feel like that was just meant to be.”

In his postgame remarks Sunday, he admitted he had also imagined falling short.

“I had a dream that I didn’t get it,” he said. “So I was like, well, we’ve gotta deny fate or whatever it is. We gotta make it happen. So I just went into it with the utmost confidence in myself and my preparation and in my guys.”

Defensive line coach Jacques Cesaire said the season, even by Garrett’s standards, was different.

“Every game I’m in awe of him, of what he can do and how special he is, but this year it’s definitely been special,” Cesaire said.

Context—and the inevitable debates

Garrett’s mark comes with familiar caveats. Strahan set his record in a 16-game season. Watt tied it in the first year of the 17-game schedule. Before sacks were an official statistic, Detroit Lions defensive end Al “Bubba” Baker was credited by team researchers with 23.0 sacks in 1978.

Those comparisons are already prompting debate over how to evaluate Garrett’s place in history. One point in his favor: he reached 23.0 sacks while playing fewer defensive snaps than Strahan and Watt did in their record seasons, a product of Cleveland’s defensive rotation and his occasional injury management.

His record-clinching sack also revived echoes of the Strahan play itself. In the 2001 finale, Green Bay’s Brett Favre appeared to slide down in front of Strahan to ensure the Giants star got the record, a moment that has been dissected for more than two decades.

On social media and local radio in Cincinnati, some fans and commentators questioned whether Burrow “took a dive” on Sunday’s hit instead of attempting to escape in the pocket, drawing direct comparisons to Favre. Video replays show Garrett clearly defeating Brown on the edge before Burrow drops.

Burrow did not speak in detail about the sack. Garrett, for his part, rejected the idea that the record was handed to him, pointing again to the double teams and chips he faced throughout the game.

“It was so tough. I knew they were going to make it difficult,” he said. “If I did get a chance, I had to make it count.”

A bright spot in another lost season

For Cleveland, Garrett’s achievement is a rare moment of unambiguous excellence in another disappointing season.

The Browns have now posted losing records in back-to-back years and have cycled through quarterbacks while dealing with uncertainty around head coach Kevin Stefanski’s future. Stefanski, who has twice been named NFL Coach of the Year, deflected questions about his job status after the game, saying he was focused on his players and would “let the chips fall where they may.”

Garrett, who signed a four-year extension worth roughly $160 million after a tense offseason that included a trade request, has become the organization’s most secure pillar. His performance this year is expected to make him a leading candidate for a second Defensive Player of the Year award.

Asked how he planned to celebrate, Garrett did not sound like a player chasing history so much as someone finally exhaling.

“Probably with some pizza and ice cream,” he said with a smile.

Then he turned back toward the locker room, record in hand, with more questions swirling around the franchise behind him than around the man who just became the NFL’s new sack king.