There are good players, there are great players, there are unstoppable players — and there’s whatever Myles Garrett is right now.

“It would almost be disrespectful to call him a freak, because there’s a few freaks around the league but he’s really one of one in terms of what he can do,” Tennessee Titans offensive lineman Peter Skoronski said of Garrett.

Skoronski and the Titans (1-11) face Garrett and the Cleveland Browns (3-9) at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland on Dec. 7 (noon CT, CBS), a matchup that doesn’t mean much beyond NFL draft implications and Garrett’s chase for greatness.

The defensive lineman leads the NFL in sacks (19), tackles for loss (28) and pass rush win rate (28%). The NFL’s single-season sack record of 22.5 (held by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan) is well within Garrett’s reach in one game, let alone with five to go.

He has played at a borderline superhuman level since Oct. 19, with 15 sacks, 20 tackles for loss and 37 quarterback pressures in six games. That includes five sacks in one game, four in another and one in his most recent game against San Francisco, where he matched up against future Hall of Fame tackle Trent Williams.

Skoronski admits that the Titans will have to plan specifically for Garrett, both on how to best neutralize him as well as how to mentally move on if and when Garrett does make the kinds of plays he’s known for making.

“He can absolutely wreck a game,” Skoronski said. “He’s already got an unreal number of sacks and will probably break the record at some point. There’s absolutely a preparation that goes into it, schematics, technique. But it’s also just acknowledging that he’s a really good player and it’s going to happen. We’re going to have to come out of the hole if he makes a play.”

Myles Garrett, the Titans and the NFL sack record

The Titans are no strangers to Garrett’s unstoppable status. In four career games against the Titans, Garrett owns 7.5 sacks, nine QB hits and a forced fumble. He was such a game-wrecker in the trip to Cleveland in 2023 (3.5 sacks, five QB hits, FF) that the Titans resorted to motioning extra tackles and tight ends across formations to follow Garrett for double- and triple-teams, telegraphing their offensive strategy in a last-ditch attempt to stop him from blowing up the game plan.

The ploys didn’t work. The 2.1 yards per play that afternoon rank as the franchise’s worst effort since moving to Tennessee, and is among the 25 worst performances by any NFL team on any game day since 2000.

Pro Football Focus credited Garrett with nine QB pressures on that afternoon in 2023. Since 2020, only two players have recorded more pressures in a game against the Titans: Pittsburgh’s Alex Highsmith (10, also in 2023) and Buffalo’s Greg Rousseau (11, in 2024). But neither player matches Garrett’s finishing skill. In the past 10 seasons, the only players to log at least 3.5 sacks, at least five QB hits and at least one forced fumble in a game against the Titans are Garrett and Arizona’s Chandler Jones in Week 1 of the 2021 season.

Now Garrett faces a 2025 Titans line that’s allowing the second-highest pressure rate in the league (25.7%) and the NFL’s fourth-worst sack rate (11.7%). Per Pro Football Focus, more than half of the pressures quarterback Cam Ward has endured have been allowed by his tackles. While that’s true for many quarterbacks, few face pressure as evenly off both edges as Ward; only five qualified quarterbacks have endured higher pressure rates off left tackle and off right tackle as Ward has this season.

And a reminder: If Garrett has 3.5 sacks in this game like he did last time out against the Titans, he’ll own a share of that single-season sack record he is chasing. All he has to do is play his third-best game of the year against the team that has allowed the most sacks in the NFL. Weather conditions are projected to be snowy, however, with winds up to 20 mph, and that might dissuade the Titans from building the game plan around dropback passing.

“Playing someone like Myles this week, you always have to know where he is,” interim Titans coach Mike McCoy said. “So you always have to have presence there and help them out. And so there’s been the give and take, I think, against the great players.”

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at  nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X @nicksuss. Subscribe to the Talkin’ Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.