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9 hours ago
7
The taste of cold beer lingered on my lips as I cut through the quiet night, 105mph toward cigarettes and hot wings. Halfway to my destination, Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable looping through the speakers, my tires hugged the winding turns around the lake that separated my neighborhood from the city. I was young and careless, high on anticipation. No seat belt. Eyes squinting through the haze of cigarette smoke.
Somewhere between the thump of the 808s and the growl of the engine, I heard a voice.
“Put on your seat belt,” it said.
I could suddenly smell my grandmother’s flour-stained hands. I knew the voice was hers. Unmistakable.
At the next red light, I clicked the belt across my chest. In the distance, a white truck drifted into view. It began to swerve. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and braced.
The impact flipped my car forward three times, glass exploding in every direction, my head slamming into the steering wheel. Beyoncé’s voice, warped and looping on a skip, beckoned me back. When I came to, the cabin smelled of blood and vomit. I kicked out the driver’s side window and crawled into the quiet night.
Everything was still. Everything except the small flame licking the hood of the white truck.
The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a squad car, handcuffed and bleeding. They arrested me for a warrant from four years earlier.
I open with my own scars to remind myself where I came from and where Myles Garrett is headed. I’m not interested in ripping his morality apart from some hubris vantage point. No one is perfect. I’m certainly not. We all make mistakes, and I’ve made enough for three lifetimes. But there is a massive gap in the stakes.
Unlike my broke ass 15 years ago, Garrett lives his life with a much greater level of leniency. He’s a high-profile NFL star. The world bends for him in ways it never did for me in that squad car. In just nine seasons, the Cleveland Browns’ All-Pro defensive end has surged into the top 20 of the all-time sack list, highlighted by his record-breaking performance during the 2025 campaign.
On 21 February, the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year was pulled over again – clocked at 94mph in a 70mph zone on an Ohio interstate at 1.35 in the morning. He’s established a disturbing ledger of life-and-death recklessness. Since entering the league in 2017, Garrett has accumulated nine speeding tickets.
Nine.
That number alone would be troubling for anyone. For Garrett, it carries extra gravity. His celebrity runs interference for a lack of regard for life’s precious fragility.
In 2021, Cleveland news outlet WKYC reported that Garrett was pulled over twice in a single 24-hour span, clocking speeds of 120mph and 105mph. These incidents took place on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70mph. He ultimately resolved the citations by paying fines of $267 and $287.
The following year, he flipped his Porsche, veering off a rural road at what police described as an unsafe speed before rolling over. He escaped with a shoulder sprain and a strained bicep. A physics warning. Delivered to Garrett mercifully, thankfully, without killing him or others. But how much luck can one man ride?
The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Garrett was driving at 65mph on a road with a 45mph speed limit. The crash report obtained by ESPN declared his actions were an “unsafe speed for the type of roadway he was on”.
The officer’s body camera recording captures her explaining to Garrett that she clocked him just under 100mph, deliberately sparing him a mandatory court appearance. Garrett, a former Texas A&M student, maintains a Texas driver’s license; during the stop, he confirmed to the officer that he did not possess an Ohio license.
Despite all the warning signs, the Browns signed the 30-year-old to a four-year extension in March 2025, briefly establishing him as the highest-paid non-quarterback in league history. The deal provides the seven-time All-Pro with an average annual salary exceeding $40m and includes more than $123m in guaranteed cash.
From the comfort of an essay, surviving a rollover as a multi-millionaire would likely rewire your brain. Sure: steel bends, glass shatters and flesh is never as durable as you thought.
Oddly, Garrett seems immune to that, or any lesson. Especially how speed multiplies consequence. What’s frightening isn’t just the tickets. It’s the whole damn pattern. Garrett’s actions don’t just affect him. Any of us could be sharing a road with him. Fans, commuters, the mothers driving home from night shifts, the kids learning how to merge onto an interstate for the first time.
Professional athletes exist in a unique vacuum where their physical limitations are constantly redefined by the best of the best in training and recovery. Sunday collisions would leave the average person in traction. Does surviving that level of violence week after week foster a dangerous, distorted mindset? Over time, perhaps Garrett’s sense of invincibility mutates, leading him and others to believe the rules governing the rest of the world don’t apply to them.
Every reckless driver believes the story will end differently for them. That the next curve will hold, the next tire will grip, the next night will pass without consequence.
Until it doesn’t. And you wake up tasting your own blood. Or worse, the blood of someone else.
I know this because I watched my own story nearly end on a stretch of dark road, scored by Beyoncé playing through blown speakers. The only thing that kept me alive was generations of ancestors reaching out through time and space, and something more sublime, pulling my seat belt around my heart like a security blanket.
Myles Garrett has been given nine warnings. At some point, for celebrities and commoners the same, the warnings run out.
And when they do, will his next burst of speed end with a citation, a hospital bed, or headstones?
