Myles Garrett left to lament 'most painful loss I've had in my career' against Texans
HOUSTON — Myles Garrett's career had featured its share of disappointing and/or heartbreaking losses leading up to Saturday night's AFC wild card game in Houston.
And, then, Garrett experienced the 45-14 loss to the Texans. That's when the pain went to a whole other level.
"This is the most painful loss I've had in my career," Garrett said. "Absolutely. And this is something I'll use every day until we get back to this point next year where we're going to the playoffs and we're making another run again. And I'm going to continue to motivate the guys and inspire the guys to use this to work a little bit harder, train a little bit more, think about what you need to do to get back to this point and never have this feeling again.”
Garrett has experienced losing in the playoffs before. In some ways, it's hard to look at a 31-point loss the same way you could look at the Browns' last postseason setback, a 22-17 loss at the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC divisional round in January 2021.
That would be understandable, except it doesn't allow for context. It doesn't set the loss against the journey that made Saturday's abrupt ending something more painful.
Garrett could point to several times along the Browns' 11-6 regular season when a day like Saturday's could've happened. Injuries had wrecked the team to a point where it almost seemed an outcome like what happened in Houston should've happened before.
The only thing was, it hadn't. That is, until it did at the absolute worst possible moment.
"We've been through so much to get here, and we had a bad day on the worst time to have a bad day," Garrett said. "And we didn't just come this far, like I said, to come this far and we let ourselves down, by not executing we know we should have. That was offense, defense, special teams. We just came up a little bit short in each phase of the game and we know that that wasn't ourselves.
"That's what makes it most painful. And they made the plays on every mistake that we made, or at least most of them.”
Garrett's final game of his seventh NFL season was, in many ways, like many over the final month and a half of the regular season. He was often close to getting his hands on the quarterback — in this case, Texans rookie C.J. Stroud — but couldn't.
Stroud was not sacked by any Browns player, part of the reason why he was able to light up the defense for 274 yards, three touchdowns and a 157.2 passer rating.
"I mean, he got the ball out on time and, you know, it was a little bit of chips and things like that, but mostly quicks and he was given enough time to get it out," Garrett said. "I mean, the man, he wasn't too flustered getting to his spots, being able to slip through and find a gap for him to throw and, when he needed to, escaping out the pocket and making throws down the field.
"But there were a lot of close plays where we applied pressure, but he made those plays or he got it out quick enough for us to not be able to make that play."
Garrett tried rushing past Pro Bowl left tackle Laremy Tunsil, and he tried rushing off the opposite side, against right tackle Charlie Heck. He tried rushing from the interior of the Browns defensive line.
None of it was enough to allow him to get to Stroud, the former Ohio State standout. It was the sixth time in the last seven games in which Garrett played that he didn't have an official sack.
Garrett finished with just three combined tackles and two offsides penalties. And a fairly blunt assessment of his performance: "Not good enough. We didn't win."
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Myles Garrett laments 'most painful loss' in playoffs to Texans
