Browns star Myles Garrett named 2025 AP NFL Defensive Player of Year after breaking sack record

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Myles Garrett‘s 2025 season was a tour de force that is already etched in the NFL history books.

So, it comes with little surprise that the Cleveland Browns star defensive end was awarded his second-career AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year on Thursday night at NFL Honors in San Francisco.

Garrett was the unanimous winner, collecting all 50 first-place votes for 500 points. Texans pass rusher Will Anderson Jr. finished second with 177 points.

Garrett was an unstoppable force this past year, piling up an NFL single-season record of 23 sacks, breaking the previous shared record of 22.5 set by Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and Pittsburgh Steelers rival T.J. Watt.

Thursday evening’s accolade was the capper of a decorated campaign for Garrett, who was voted to his seventh Pro Bowl and earned his fifth All-Pro honor. Along with fellow NFL Honors nominees Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (both finalists for Offensive Player of the Year), Garrett was a unanimous first-team All-Pro choice.

No doubt on a Hall of Fame trajectory, the 30-year-old Garrett is now the ninth player to win multiple AP DPOY honors, joining Hall of Famers Lawrence Taylor, Joe Greene, Ray Lewis, Mike Singletary, Bruce Smith and Reggie White, along with contemporaries J.J. Watt and Aaron Donald.

In addition to his sacks mark, Garrett also led the league with 33 tackles for loss while tying a career high with 60 tackles and setting a new career best with 39 QB hits. Garrett was a quarterback’s worst nightmare in 2025, sacking 11 different signal-callers in total during the season, the last of which was Joe Burrow in the fourth quarter of the Browns’ season-ending 20-18 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 4.

Many of the best of the best were gobbled up by Garrett this season, including the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, the Chicago Bears’ Caleb Williams, the San Francisco 49ers’ Brock Purdy, the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen and Sunday’s Super Bowl participant Drake Maye, who Garrett took down an astounding five times in Week 8.

Garrett’s success shined through the Browns’ struggles of a 5-12 season along with the overwhelming attention from opponents.

Opposing offenses were dead set on stopping Garrett, but he wreaked havoc no matter the game plan designed to stop him. He was double teamed or chip blocked on 186 pass rushes — the most by any edge rusher since at least 2018, per Next Gen Stats. He had a league-best 32 QB pressures and eight sacks when facing extra help, according to NGS.

For so much of the season, Garrett’s supremacy seemed inevitable, as he recorded at least half a sack in nine consecutive games.

Thusly, in a year in which the majority of the league’s annual awards featured hotly contested races, Garrett winning Defensive Player of the Year on Thursday night was an accolade delivered as expected.

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