Browns top pick Myles Garrett got the Steelers’ attention, when in the mildest terms possible, said he was ready to sack quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to get his career going.
And while teams generally go to great lengths to keep from being interesting in that way, Browns executive Sashi Brown saw it as another step in their development as a team.
“We’re not scared of it,’' Brown said, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Myles, if you go back and look at his [introductory] press conference, has the right amount of levity balancing that confidence.’'
Brown said he didn’t think the rookie defensive end meant any disrespect, and thought the words might have been given more credence than they perhaps deserved.
“I just don’t think the 160 carat tweets and headlines that get taken out of context often should reflect who the person is,’' he said. “It’s easy in this world to judge based on the headlines, and I think increasingly we’re finding and Donald Trump’s finding this out, how difficult it is to survive in a public job and that’s what being the No. 1 draft pick is for about three or four months and now he’s going to understand it’s a longer-term deal that he asked for and he wants it. . . .
“This is a 21-year-old young man who’s wise beyond his years. Just to correct, he didn’t say he’d hurt Ben, he did say he’d take him down, but you have to spend time with him. You have to understand what his values are. He’s very confident in his abilities. He works his tail off. He’s about as hard-working . . . as any college prospect we’ve had.”
As trash talk goes, it was about as benign as any we’ve heard. But after Brown diagramed all the sentences and broke it down, it’s borderline boring, which is probably the way the Browns would prefer it.