The Cleveland Browns may be well on their way to another losing season. They may be poised to add yet another quarterback to their years-long carousel under center. But there’s at least one positive in the midst of the mess.
Myles Garrett.
For years, the Pro Bowl pass rusher has racked up sacks to give Cleveland a relatively competitive defense, even while the offense flounders and the top of the staff changes hands. The 2025 NFL campaign has been something special even by Garrett’s lofty standards, however.
Fresh off a monster performance in which he sacked two-time MVP Lamar Jackson four times to threaten an upset of the Baltimore Ravens, Garrett is up to 15 quarterback takedowns in 10 games as the headliner of a top-five defense. Which means he’s also on pace to break the NFL’s single-season sack record (22.5), which was set by Michael Strahan in 2001 and tied by T.J. Watt in 2021.
Garrett, who also leads the league with 22 tackles for loss (tying a career high he set last year), is already the heavy betting favorite for NFL Defensive Player of the Year (-320 at FanDuel Sportsbook). And that might remain the case even if he failed to take another snap.
Which raises an even bigger question: Where, exactly, does Garrett rank among all-time pass rushers?
Measuring Myles Garrett’s all-time standing among pass rushers
His record pace of downing quarterbacks in 2025 already has him at 117.5 sacks for his career, which began in 2014, when the Browns drafted him No. 1 overall out of Texas A&M. That total ranks 24th on the NFL’s all-time leaderboard, per Pro Football Reference, though it’d be just outside the top 30 if unofficial sacks are included; the league didn’t officially track the statistic prior to 1982.
So right off the bat, we can safely call Garrett one of the NFL’s top-30 edge defenders of all time. After all, the sacks speak for themselves. It’s not every day you come across a veteran with more than 100 under his belt. But even that designation is surely too soft for Garrett, whose physical build is as freakishly imposing as his resume.
The first player to log at least 12 sacks in six straight seasons, Garrett has also had no fewer than 14 sacks in a single season since 2020. He’s accumulated every major award: Pro Bowls, All-Pros, one Defensive Player of the Year nod and counting. He even got an MVP vote in 2023. He may soon challenge Hall of Famer Reggie White’s record of nine straight seasons with at least double-digit sacks, as this year marks eight straight for Garrett.
But the biggest thing working in Garrett’s favor is his age; he doesn’t even turn 30 until the end of this year. He became in 2024 the fourth-fastest player to ever hit 100 career sacks, behind only White, Watt and DeMarcus Ware. He achieved the feat in 115 games, tying the pace of Bruce Smith, the NFL’s all-time leader in career sacks.
These numbers mean one thing: If Garrett were to retire right now, even before the end of his ninth season, he’d be a virtual lock to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Plenty of players with far less sustained impact have been enshrined as NFL royalty. For the entirety of Garrett’s career, save for maybe a rookie season limited to 11 games (in which he still managed seven sacks), no one has questioned him as one of the game’s best at his role.
Still, where does he rank among current or fellow future Hall of Famers? That’s a trickier discussion, given longevity is the one thing most players ahead of him on the all-time sack leaderboard have against him. Or do they? Garrett actually ranks first all-time in career sacks per game (0.93) among players with at least five games played, ahead of legends like Reggie White (0.87) and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Lawrence Taylor (0.79). Technically this means Garrett is the most efficient pass rusher in NFL history, averaging almost one sack per game played across nearly a decade of work.
A key, of course, is that Hall of Famers trailing Garrett in the sacks-per-game category often played longer than he did. This makes plenty of sense; as you age, extending your NFL career by additional seasons, your sack totals naturally tend to decline. White, for example, played 16 seasons, or seven more than Garrett has already played. Taylor, meanwhile, went 13 seasons before retiring, or four more than Garrett’s already played. While they technically ended their careers with worse sack-per-game marks than Garrett has now, they should also be credited for their longevity, remaining NFL staples well into their mid- or even late 30s.
Then again, perhaps we should just be crediting Garrett for even warranting placement in the conversation. Consider that every single defender ranked ahead of him on the all-time sacks list played at least several seasons more than he’s already logged.
All-time sacks leaderboard
Note: Italics indicates active player.
If Garrett were to maintain his current career average in sacks per season (13.06), it would take roughly two and a half seasons for the perennial Pro Bowler to climb all the way into the top five on the all-time sacks list. Even if his average were to slip to, say, eight sacks per season, he’d need less than another half-decade to reach the upper echelon of the leaderboard, challenging all-timers like Greene, White and maybe even Smith for the top crown.
Aside from that, he already ranks 14th in all-time tackles for loss (138), confirming his impact goes beyond just sacks and putting him ahead of legends like Strahan and longtime Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.
So where do we place Garrett as things stand? There’s little doubt he should be considered one of the top-10 most impactful pass rushers of all time, factoring in both the volume of his production and the relatively small sample size with which he’s logged it. Consider him, at least for now, like the defensive version of Calvin Johnson, the legendary Detroit Lions wide receiver who posted historic marks, including six straight 1,000-yard seasons and a record 1,964-yard peak, but retired after just nine NFL seasons.
We don’t expect Garrett to walk away after 2025, by the way, which means he’s only on track to enhance his resume and reputation. The only other thing that might catapult his all-time standing even more? Doing exactly what he does for a winning football team.
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