Browns Not Planning To Trade Myles Garrett

The Browns recently agreed to a revised contract with All-Pro edge rusher Myles Garrett, who saw his option bonus dates pushed back from the first week of the league year to the week before the regular season begins.

The adjustment makes it more financially feasible to trade Garrett. Any deal would have to take place after June 1 to allow Cleveland to push some of the resulting dead money into 2027. Previously, Garrett’s option would have triggered in March, adding another $31.5MM in prorated cap hits to the Browns’ ledger and increasing the dead cap charges over $70MM, per OverTheCap. By pushing back the option bonus date, the Browns could execute a post-June 1 trade with Garrett’s new team taking on the payments (and cap hits).

But general manager Andrew Berry is maintaining his long-held stance that the team would not be trading Garrett.

“If we wanted to trade Myles, we wouldn’t have needed to make a contract adjustment,” Berry said on Sunday (via ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi). “So it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” 

Technically, Berry is correct. The Browns could have left Garrett’s contract as-is and traded him after June 1, which would have left just over $21MM in dead money in 2026 with the other $59MM set to hit in 2027. They would see an increase in 2026 cap space with plenty of time to adjust other contracts and budget for the remaining dead money the following year.

But the new contract still makes those numbers significantly more favorable for Cleveland’s finances, which are already in a somewhat precarious state due to the Deshaun Watson deal, which will leave more than $130MM in dead money when it voids next year. Reducing the overall amount of potential dead money from a Garrett trade is certainly worth doing, if only for the flexibility. It is also worth noting that the option bonus payment dates were pushed back in each remaining year of Garrett’s contract, which essentially preserves this flexibility for the rest of the deal.

Garrett, though, has a no-trade clause. He was willing to make this alteration, which offers him some unknown benefits, likely relating to his payment schedule. His blessing would still be required for any sort of a trade, but this latest contract revision will ensure that such speculation will continue to be an annual affair.