Browns Win and Myles Garrett Breaks the NFL Sack Record: Game Notes
Another late season win down to the wire while history was made.
The Browns had all the vibes of an upset rolling throughout today’s game. They entered the game as seven-point road underdogs, but the defense was having none of it. It took just over one quarter for the defense to put two touchdowns on the board — one via a 97-yard Devin Bush interception return and another on a 47-yard Sam Webb fumble return. The 14–6 lead proved to be enough trips to the end zone to make the difference in the game.
The offense mustered two field-goal drives, and the Browns rallied to win the AFC North matchup 20–18, capping off the 2025 season. It started with a loss to the Bengals in Cleveland and ended with a Browns win in Cincinnati.
The highlight of the day, however, was the record-breaking sack by Myles Garrett. His new NFL record of 23 sacks took nearly the entire game to come together, before a sack of Joe Burrow deep in Browns territory helped seal the deal.
Garrett spoke after the game about the dream he had the night before about not breaking the record and throughout much of the game this did feel like the fate Garrett was destined to deal with.
Whenever big NFL milestones come down, the league likes to let those players recognize the moment quickly with their teammates and when a record falls that has stood since 2001, it is justifiable that the league would want there to be a brief moment for Garrett. The Bengals, however, didn’t enjoy that fact as Zac Taylor commented on the celebration the officiating crew had in place for the moment.
Taylor made plenty of other decisions that sealed his team’s fate on the day. Check the “go for it” data on several of the Bengals punt decisions for all the evidence you need.
Anyway, to put Garrett’s season into perspective you have to properly look at his opportunity to get to the quarterback compared to his peers. The only one that comes truly close was the 1987 season from Reggie White.
Otherwise Garrett did what he set out to do and that was to re-write history. He will collect his second Defensive Player of the Year award soon enough.
Here are the rest of your Week 18 Game Notes.
The offense barely deserves a real write up. The group barely reached 200 yards on the day, just 3.8 yards per play, and the passing game was able to muster just 111 yards. The quarterback play from Shedeur Sanders was slow and sloppy for most of the game and allowed the Bengals to roll up six sacks on the afternoon. We will break down the film but it felt like Sanders went in the wrong direction in this one. To his credit, he did hit two big throws on the final drive to lead the Browns down into field goal range. One throw of 13 yards to Isaiah Bond and another of 11 yards to Jerry Jeudy.
The running game had moments and Rocket Sanders feels like a nice piece of the operation but it wasn’t able to string together enough consistency to lead to several longer drives. Dylan Sampson had some nice runs and efforts in the passing game as well making a defender miss.
Malachi Corley did his thing running three times for 18 yards and then hauling in two passes for 20 yards. He was one of the few bright spots on this side of the ball and should be a nice gadget piece for the future.
Offensive line play was once again inconsistent to finish the season as I remain so mystified why they cannot pick up twist stunts more often as the rest of the NFL seems to do. I will make a long form video on this topic for you at some point. However they are only credited with 8 pressures from the first viewing as the quarterback did plenty of his own pressure generation today. Let’s hope Luke Wypler didn’t suffer anything serious with his injury in the second half.
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