CINCINNATI — The ghost of Michael Strahan’s 2001 record finally has company—and now, a successor. On a cold Sunday in Cincinnati, Myles Garrett didn’t just chase history; he ran right through it.
With just over five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the Cleveland Browns clinging to a lead, Garrett exploded off the edge. He beat Bengals tackle Orlando Brown Jr. with a signature swim move, collapsing the pocket in 0.23 seconds to wrap up Joe Burrow. That split-second of violence etched Garrett’s name into the record books: 23 sacks in a single season.
For weeks, the number 22.5 loomed large. Strahan set it in 2001; T.J. Watt matched it in 2021. Garrett entered Week 18 sitting at 22, needing one moment of brilliance to stand alone. The Bengals knew it, too. They threw double teams, chip blocks, and sliding protections at him all afternoon.
“I don’t think I saw more than three singles on a real drop-back the whole game,” Garrett said in the locker room, still wearing the game ball. “I knew if I did, I’d have to make that moment count.”
Myles Garrett’s road to 125.5 sacks 📈@flash_garrett | @browns pic.twitter.com/ulHX0tQsAI
— NFL (@NFL) January 5, 2026
Make it count, he did. The sack wasn’t just a statistic; it was the exclamation point on a Defensive Player of the Year campaign. It also marked his 125.5th career sack, moving him past Dwight Freeney for 20th on the all-time list—a staggering pace for a player who just turned 30.
Garrett’s 2025 campaign will go down as one of the most disruptive defensive performances in modern football.
“He’s the Defensive Player of the Year. You can make him the MVP if I had a vote. We watch greatness every day in practice, but today, the whole world saw it.” — Kevin Stefanski, Browns Head Coach
While the Browns finished the season 5-12 and missed the playoffs, Garrett’s individual brilliance provided a silver lining for Cleveland. The victory over the Bengals (20-18) was a morale booster, but the story was all #95.
Garrett has now officially entered the “Gold Jacket” conversation not as a future possibility, but as an active inevitability. Surpassing Reggie White’s under-30 production suggests that Bruce Smith’s all-time record of 200 sacks—once thought untouchable—might actually be in danger if Garrett maintains this pace.
