Why Myles Garrett’s season still towers over T.J. Watt despite fewer games argument

In 2021, Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt tied the NFL's single-season sacks record, taking the quarterback down 22.5 times despite missing two games. This season, Cleveland Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett is chasing that record down and looks almost certain to break it, as he sits at 22.0 sacks with two games remaining.

Garrett might be on the brink of the record, but does that mean he's had the more impressive season? I mean, through 15 games, Watt had 0.5 more sacks, so that kind of settles it, right? If Watt had simply played two more games, he would have put the record out of reach for Garrett, yeah? In the words of Lee Corso, "not so fast, my friend." Because simply comparing two players based on two stats — games played and sacks — is stripping out a lot of context from this situation, context that can really help us figure out which season was most impressive.

Myles Garrett is taking better advantage of his opportunities

Here's where Myles Garrett stands above T.J. Watt and why Garrett's season is ultimately more impressive: Garrett has actually had significantly fewer opportunities to get his sacks, even if he'll ultimately play in more games than his division rival.

Granted, this was before Cleveland's last game, but it also highlights something wild about Garrett's season, which is that teams simply aren't throwing against Cleveland at the same level that teams were throwing against Pittsburgh, or against any other team who had player with 18 or more sacks in a season.

Garrett's number may have dropped after collecting just a half-sack last game — my back-of-the-envelope, probably-wrong math has him at 20.7 passes per sack now, up just a hair from Schatz's chart, which had him at 20.3 — but it still towers above the rest of the field.

Simply put, it took about seven more passing snaps for Watt to collect a sack than it has for Garrett this season, and that's what makes his performance especially impressive. The raw sack totals are great, but a number like this shows just how much of a problem he is snap, after snap, after snap, and it also showcases how teams try to game plan around that by not going to the air as much against this Browns team.

Look: I'm not discounting what Watt did. If he'd played 17 games in 2021, he very well might have had the record not only to himself, but to a number that would have made it hard for Garrett to catch up. But he also had many more chances to get those sacks. As this Reddit post mentions, Garrett would be expected to have 30 sacks if he'd had the same number of pass rush opportunities that Watt had, and that's with two games left to play for Garrett.

What we're seeing out of Garrett this season is unprecedented. Even if he just barely scrapes past the sack record, the rate at which he's getting to the quarterback is historical in its own right.