Monson: Browns' Myles Garrett will be a favorite for 2021 Defensive Player of the Year Award if he can stay healthy for a full season

It felt harsh ranking Cleveland Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett 25th on the PFF50 because there is an agreed understanding that he will be one of the most unstoppable forces in football if and when he puts it all together. It hasn’t quite happened yet, but the 2021 NFL season may just be that time.

Garrett has shown that he is capable of a Defensive Player of the Year kind of season in each of the past two campaigns, but, for different reasons, each has been truncated and the full season’s worth of that play has been lost.

Garrett was as good as any defensive lineman in the game over the first half of the 2019 season before infamously attacking Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph with his helmet and being suspended for the remainder of the year. The following season, he was on a tear once again before catching COVID-19 and not quite being the same force once he returned.

Removing the games from after Garrett’s comeback from COVID-19 and adding his last two partial seasons together, only T.J. Watt has a higher PFF pass-rushing grade than Garrett’s 91.8 over that time. Garrett’s pass-rush win rate (22.6%) trails only Watt and Joey Bosa over the same span of games.

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In total, he has produced 89 pressures across 612 pass-rushing snaps at the peak of his game and a further 54 winning reps where the ball came out before he had a chance to pressure the quarterback.