Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett started Super Bowl week by making his trade request public. The Detroit Lions are an easy match as a potential suitor, with the idea he and Aidan Hutchinson would become the best edge rusher duos in the league.
Unless general manager Brad Holmes is willing to make a dramatic shift from his core philosophy, the Lions won’t be giving up what it would take to acquire Garrett. Making a call to the Browns is a no-brainer though.
At NFL Honors on Thursday night, Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press asked Hutchinson about the prospect of the Lions trading for Garrett.
“Everyone’s asking me about that. I don’t know,” Hutchinson said. “I don’t think — you can’t have that many dudes on one D-line, I don’t know. Who knows, but I think it’s very unlikely.”
In the moment, those seemed like pretty harmless comments. What Hutchinson said did come off as a little odd though, and that’s what Mike Valenti of 97.1 The Ticket took notice of.
Detroit radio host took issue with what Aidan Hutchinson said about teaming up with Myles Garrett
During his show on Friday, Valenti went all-in to question Hutchinson’s words.
“What time in history have you ever heard a great player say they didn’t want to be surrounded by other great players?” Valenti said. “It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Just straight away. If you want to say it’s above your pay grade, you want to stay out of it, I get it. If you want to say, ‘Hell yeah, I’d love to have him, but clearly that decision is made above my head, cool.’ You know what, I’ve never heard from a great player, ‘Nah, we don’t really need that. Can’t have that many good people on a D-line.’ No one, ever.”
Valenti and his co-hosts/guests went on to speculate that maybe Hutchinson doesn’t want to share the limelight with someone of Garrett’s caliber, with mention of what Amon-Ra St. Brown said about the possibility of adding Garrett on his podcast this week and what a lot of other players generally say when asked about the prospect of adding a great player to their team.
Hutchinson’s choice of words in the moment with Birkett (“you can’t have than many dudes on one d-line”) was poor. and it’d be different if he was caught off-guard by the question about Garrett. There may or may not be more to his comments, but the way he answered the question easily invites speculation about why he said it.
