The Cleveland Browns didn't have the best week all in all against the Pittsburgh Steelers, losing 15-10 in what Kevin Stefanski described as "just a frustrating day, a disappointing day." Star defensive end Myles Garrett took to Instagram on Monday afternoon, saying that "great isn't good enough right now" and that he needs to be better."
But... does he really?
All you have to do is look at the counting stats to see that Garrett had a pretty darn good showing in Week 8, as has been the case all year. He added another sack to his league-high 10.5-sack count. He added two more tackles for loss to his league-high 11-TFL total. He had four tackles total, all of them solo efforts.
If you need more evidence that he had another dominant effort, you can look at Pro Football Focus, which awarded him with a 92.9 overall defensive grade on the day, the highest of any edge rusher (barring a phenomenal performance from a Chief or Giant on Monday night), and a 94.3 pass rush grade, which was the highest of any defender. That's pretty hard to beat and should suffice as all the evidence you'll need.
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But if you want to look even further, as a Browns fan looking for the bright spots of the loss, you can check out PFF's rankings on the other side of the ball (h/t Steelers Depot). There, you'll see that Dan Moore Jr., the Steelers' left tackle who played 75 offensive snaps — many against Garrett — was given an initial pass-blocking grade of 0.0. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The next lowest grade was given to Titans guard Rodger Saffold, with a 7.8 pass-blocking grade.
Run blocking? Fortunately, that's a little bit of a different story.
Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger actually praised Moore for his work against Garrett, though PFF clearly wasn't as laudatory.
"I thought Dan did a great job," Roethlisberger said (via Steelers Wire). "It’s tough to ask a rookie to go against that guy, and what he did today was pretty special. I can’t say enough about the line, run game and pass pro, they are the heart of this group."
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