Nine speeding tickets and counting: Myles Garrett and the illusion of invincibility | Cleveland Browns

TThe taste of cold beer lingered on my lips as I moved through the still night, 105 mph toward cigarettes and hot wings. Halfway to my destination, Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable played on a loop through the speakers, my tires hugging the winding turns around the lake that separated my neighborhood from the city. I was young and carefree, full of anticipation. No seat belt. Eyes squint through the haze of cigarette smoke.

Somewhere between the thud of the 808s and the roar of the engine, I heard a voice.

“Put on your seat belt,” he said.

Suddenly I smelled the smell of my grandmother’s flour-stained hands. I knew it was his. Undoubted.

At the next red light, I put the belt across my chest. In the distance, a white truck appeared. He started to deviate. I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and braced myself.

The impact sent my car forward three times, windows shattered in all directions and my head hit the steering wheel. Beyoncé’s voice, distorted and looped, beckoned me back. When I came to, the cabin smelled of blood and vomit. I smashed out the driver’s side window and crawled out into the still night.

Everything was calm. Everything except the little flame licking the hood of the white truck.

The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a police car, handcuffed and bleeding. They arrested me on an arrest warrant issued four years earlier.

I open with my own scars to remind me where I came from and where Myles Garrett is going. I’m not interested in destroying his morality from an arrogant point of view. Nobody is perfect. I certainly am not. We all make mistakes, and I’ve made enough to last three lifetimes. But there is a huge gap between the issues.

Unlike my broke ass from 15 years ago, Garrett lives his life with a lot more indulgence. He is a top star in the NFL. The world bends for him like it never did for me in that patrol car. In just nine seasons, the Cleveland Browns’ All-Pro defensive end has climbed into the top 20 on the all-time sacks list, highlighted by his record-breaking performance during the 2025 campaign.

On February 21, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year was arrested again – clocked going 94 mph in a 70 mph zone on an Ohio highway at 1:35 a.m. He established a worrying record of life and death recklessness. Since entering the league in 2017, Garrett has racked up nine speeding tickets.

Nine.

This figure alone would be troubling to anyone. For Garrett, this carries added gravity. His celebrity intrudes through lack of respect for the precious fragility of life.

In 2021, Cleveland news outlet WKYC reported that Garrett was arrested twice in a single 24-hour period, recording speeds of 120 mph and 105 mph. These incidents took place on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph. He ultimately resolved the citations by paying fines of $267 and $287.

The following year, he flipped his Porsche, leaving a rural road at what police described as dangerous speed, before rolling over. He escaped with a sprained shoulder and a strained bicep. A physical warning. Delivered to Garrett mercifully, thankfully, without killing him or others. But how lucky can a man stand?

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Garrett was going 65 mph on a road with a speed limit of 45 mph. The accident report obtained by ESPN stated that his actions constituted an “unsafe speed for the type of road he was on.”

The officer’s body camera recording shows her explaining to Garrett that she clocked him going just under 100 mph, deliberately sparing him a mandatory court appearance. Garrett, a former Texas A&M student, has a Texas driver’s license; during the stop, he confirmed to the officer that he did not have an Ohio driver’s license.

Despite all the warning signs, the Browns signed the 30-year-old to a four-year extension in March 2025, briefly making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in league history. The deal offers the seven-time All-Pro an average annual salary in excess of $40 million and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed cash.

In the comfort of an essay, surviving a turnaround as a multi-millionaire would likely reprogram your brain. Sure: steel bends, glass shatters, and flesh is never as durable as you thought.

Oddly, Garrett seems immune to this, or any lesson. Especially how speed multiplies the consequences. What’s scary isn’t just the tickets. It’s the whole damn model. Garrett’s actions don’t just affect him. Any of us could share a road with him. The fans, the commuters, the mothers returning home from their night shift, the children learning to turn onto a highway for the first time.

Professional athletes exist in a unique vacuum where their physical limits are constantly redefined by the best of the best in training and recovery. Sunday crashes would leave the average person in traction. Does surviving this level of violence week after week promote a dangerous and distorted mindset? Over time, perhaps Garrett’s sense of invincibility mutates, leading him and others to believe that the rules governing the rest of the world do not apply to them.

Every reckless driver thinks the story will end differently for him. That the next corner will hold, that the next tire will grip, that the next night will pass without consequence.

Until it doesn’t. And you wake up tasting your own blood. Or worse, someone else’s blood.

I know this because I watched my own story almost end on a dark stretch of road, marked by Beyoncé playing through blown speakers. The only thing that has kept me alive are generations of ancestors who have spanned time and space, and something more sublime, pulling my seat belt around my heart like a security blanket.

Myles Garrett received nine warnings. At some point, for celebrities and everyday people alike, the warnings wear thin.

And when they do, will his next rush end in a citation, a hospital bed, or headstones?