Normally when people cook up trade ideas there’s a very clear winner and loser. Oftentimes you see them from fans trying to will an unbalanced deal into existence. On Friday morning former NFL GM Mike Tannenbaum threw out a trade involving Myles Garrett that is so incredibly bad, so mind-bogglingly awful that neither team involved would entertain it for a second.
Ready? I promise you’re not.
Lions receive: DE Myles Garrett
Browns receive: Three 1st round picks, 2nd round pick, RB Jahmyr Gibbs
This proposal is so bad it’s honestly difficult to write about it. Now, in terms of Detroit there’s no doubt they’d like to shore up their pass rushing as we approach the playoffs in light of the injury to Aiden Hutchinson, but what you’re asking here is for the team to blow up their current offense and their future pipeline to make it through the rest of the season, then have the best pass rush in the NFL.
Why this would be atrocious for the Lions
Let’s start with the big one: Jahmyr Gibbs is critical to their offense. He’s on pace for over 1,400 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns this season, and that’s before we talk about his receiving yards as a factor in the offense.
Then we get to the cap figures, and sure Detroit could absorb Garrett’s salary — but it would eat up all of their functional cap space moving forward. That would make it incredibly difficult to work out upcoming deals for their myriad of great draft picks without hoping there would be a huge increase to the salary cap.
Finally we have THE FOUR DRAFT PICKS set to head to Cleveland, including three firsts. Granted, they would all likely be late-round choices, but it would utterly hamstring the ability of the Lions to build key parts of their roster until 2028.
This is the kind of trade you make for a franchise quarterback when you think they’ll win you a Super Bowl. Myles Garrett is the best defensive end in the NFL as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t think he would guarantee a Super Bowl for the Lions.
Just awful all around.
Why this would be atrocious for the Browns
Cleveland is a team that doesn’t have a lot of franchise-defining players in their history. Myles Garrett is one of them.
Making this deal would be tantamount to ripping the soul out of the team for a handful of magic beans and Jahmyr Gibbs, who is incredible, but doesn’t really fit the Browns offense at all. They would be giving up their best defensive player, a guy who can literally change a game on his own and weaken the entire organization for nothing.
Then you factor in how late those picks are going to be, likely all in the late 20s at best, and there is zero chance the Browns find another player remotely close to Garrett’s ability with those selections.
Sure, it’s a massive haul on paper — but one that functionally makes zero sense in practicality.
Who wins?
Nobody. There’s a reason Mike Tannenbaum failed as GM of the Jets.
