One of the most anticipated Week 1 games in the upcoming 2022 NFL regular season is the showdown between the Cleveland Browns and the Carolina Panthers. At the center of it all is no other than Baker Mayfield, the former Browns quarterback and now QB1 of the Panthers after winning the job over Sam Darnold. Mayfield carries an intriguing revenge narrative into this matchup, considering how his tenure with the Browns concluded. For his former teammate, Browns pass rusher Myles Garrett, it's all business — and nothing more.
Via Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal:
“He’s my former teammate,” Garrett said. “But I don’t have any … there’s no rivalry between me and him and there’s no rivalry between the Panthers and the Browns. Yes, he was here but that doesn’t mean I have an added sense of urgency to get to him. I want to play my best and whatever’s in the cards, that’s it for me. If I can help my team win. If I can put them in the best position to win, I’m going to do that and if I can get a couple sacks along the way, I would kind of enjoy that too.”
Myles Garrett can continue to play down the Browns' Week 1 meeting with Baker Mayfield but that's not going to stop fans from making the matchup into whatever they'd like it to be. The Browns and the Panthers aren't exactly serious Super Bowl contenders, but the drama provided by the idea of Mayfield going up against his former team should provide more attention than this type of matchup normally gets.