Bill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more.
He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.

The moment Browns fans have been dreading finally arrived last week. After a disastrous 2024 season, star edge rusher and franchise icon Myles Garrett took to social media to announce he was requesting a trade. The 2017 No. 1 pick has been a cornerstone ever since arriving in Cleveland, racking up 102.5 sacks and 200 knockdowns over eight seasons. He ranks second in both categories since the start of the 2017 season, behind T.J. Watt.

Garrett’s statement reflects the reality the Browns are facing after their disastrous decision to trade for Deshaun Watson in 2022, a move that cost them multiple first-round picks and locked them into a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal, $92 million of which remains on the books. The Browns were one of the worst offenses in recent NFL history when Watson was on the field last season, and while they improved after he tore his right Achilles in November, they will feel the impact of the missing draft picks and his massive contract for years to come.

Plenty of players issue trade requests as part of their efforts to land a new contract, and Garrett will certainly feel like it’s time for a new deal. There are two years left on his five-year, $125 million extension, which was a market-resetting deal when he signed it in 2020. Since then, five edge rushers have topped that mark, including San Francisco’s Nick Bosa, who is making $34 million per season on his new contract. Dallas’ Micah Parsons is expected to top that figure when he signs his extension this offseason.

Garrett is due just over $40 million over the next two years, all of which is non-guaranteed. As he approaches his age-30 season, he understandably wants a raise to the top of the edge-rushing market and a multiyear guarantee. The Browns have him on relatively friendly cap numbers over the next couple of years, but as CBS Sports’ Joel Corry wrote about, that contract structure could make him tougher to trade.

While the most likely scenario remains that Garrett signs an extension with the Browns, it would be a surprise if he felt the need to put this much pressure on the team to get a deal done under those circumstances. It’s one thing when a player might feel like he’s about to be a cut or trade candidate or when his team has been hesitant to sign a new deal, which has led to trade requests in the past. Garrett has already been on a significant deal for several years, and Cleveland shouldn’t have many arguments against giving a player with his résumé a new contract. General manager Andrew Berry has said the Browns have no intention of trading Garrett, but what teams say publicly and end up doing in reality are often two different things.

There’s enough smoke here to do a deeper dive. If the Browns are really willing to trade Garrett, what would a fair price even look like? And which teams should be interested? Let’s try to find comps for a Garrett swap and then go around the league to see which franchises could credibly complete a deal for a player who should be going to Canton one day.

What’s a fair trade for a legendary player in his prime?

How often do Pro Football Hall of Famers get traded before they turn 30? More often than you might think, but most of those deals aren’t great comps for Garrett’s situation. Future stars Minkah Fitzpatrick, Brett Favre and Steve Young were traded early in their careers, long before they broke out. Jared Allen, a 2025 class member and 2004 fourth-round pick by the Chiefs, eventually became a four-time first-team All-Pro, but he had only earned that honor once before being traded to the Vikings in 2008.

A more accurate way to frame this could be to look at players who had already established themselves as superstars in their 20s and were then dealt before turning 30. A reasonable proxy for that stardom could be multiple first-team All-Pro appearances, like the four Garrett has through his age-29 season. Since 1980, 38 other players have earned at least four first-team All-Pro appearances in their 20s. Not one of those 38 racked up those four-plus All-Pro nods before being traded, as Garrett is set to do if he’s dealt this offseason.

What if the bar is lowered slightly? Looking at the players who were selected as a first-team All-Pro three times before being dealt in their 20s over the past 40 seasons, there are six comps for a Garrett swap. They yielded very different returns.