Behind the scenes with Myles Garrett on draft day
ARLINGTON, Texas — At 9 a.m., Myles Garrett wakes up to a bowl of oatmeal prepared by his mother, the formidable Audrey Garrett. She is mentor, teacher, butt-whooper and, particularly these days, gatekeeper. Myles is the presumed No. 1 pick of the NFL Draft, scheduled for later on this clear-skied Thursday in late April, and Audrey has a hundred tasks to complete before that moment arrives. “All my trust is in her hands,” Myles says. “Whatever she deems right… since she has my best interest at heart, I take one look at it and make a move.”
Audrey has deemed it right and proper that the NFL Players Association should host a hometown draft party at a local golf course for Myles, who preferred to have as many family and friends around him as possible for the big moment. The red carpet and green room in Philadelphia couldn’t provide that, so he turned down the invite. Says his father, Lawrence Garrett: “He’s not the kind of guy that wants to dress up, put on a suit, walk across a stage. That’s not him.”
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At 12:15 p.m., Myles’ two best friends arrive to join the fight. Jesus Martinez and Ryan Box are happy to play Smash Bros. or Guitar Hero with their oldest friend, though they’ve sworn off Mortal Kombat. “He’s so good at it,” Box says, “it got to where it wasn’t fun to play anymore.” Martinez and Myles have been friends since second grade; Box joined the group in middle school. The boys know to ask if Audrey will be OK with them wearing t-shirts, rather than something more formal, at the party; Myles assures them it’s fine.
Myles, 6'4", 270 pounds, stands a foot taller than Martinez and weighs roughly twice as much as his oldest pal. They’d walk to a nearby creek as kids, journeying down the riverbank, hopping from one large rock to another. Garrett struggled to master one particular rock, slipping and falling in the water every time he attempted to follow Martinez’s path.
“We were 10 or 11 years old,” Martinez says. “I could maneuver around the slippery edges easily, but he was so lanky and awkward he’d slip and fall. His foot was so big he couldn't place it correctly. One day he finally landed it, but he was so big the rock broke and he fell in anyway.”
The episode foreshadowed what was to come in Myles’ athletic career. The tall, lanky kid who loved basketball never excelled at precision activities like dribbling, finger rolls or tight-roping a baseline. He was meant to break things.
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There’s some relief, however, in the firm belief that Garrett will go first. When Audrey’s eldest son, Sean, opted for a draft party at the family’s church in 2007, the group had no idea where he’d be drafted. “We weren’t sure if he’d sit there for a while because he had issues in college,” Audrey says. “So the pressure was there. With Myles I can relax.”
There’s one more visitor. At 3:30 p.m., Randy Moss, in town to handle the ESPN live shot from the Garrett party, stops by. Garrett wore No. 84 early in his high school career as a nod to Moss, his favorite offensive player. Now Moss is in his living room, telling him the NFL might not be everything he imagined.
“A lot of guys get messed up because they don’t understand it’s a business,” Moss says. “A lot of guys who leave college and go to the pros still think its football. One of the biggest things I try to preach is that I didn’t have any guidance. I came into the league with my head chopped off. You’re the first overall pick so you’re going to have people coming at you from different directions, and you have to be ready for that.”
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Soon, Hue Jackson takes over the call.
“Didn’t I tell you, you were my guy?” Jackson says, dispelling any notion the pick was ever in question.
For Myles, it’s a tremendous relief. He takes off his t-shirt to reveal a second shirt with Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame logo on his chest. “When LeBron won his first championship they asked him, ‘LeBron, how you feel?’” Myles says, “and he said, ‘It’s about damn time.’
“Everybody can be done with this. No more mock drafts and all that. Just know where I’m going, put the work in and let’s get this cranked up.”
Myles spends the next hour and a half greeting almost every party attendee with a hug. He retires at the end of the first round to a picnic table near the crawfish boil and puts his famous appetite to work. He was 11 pounds at birth, and by age 5 he could put down 15 pancakes in one sitting, according to Audrey.
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While the boys are in the woods, Charles Garrett, Myles’ grandfather on his father’s side, leaves the party to go visit his mother, 98-year-old Minnie Garrett. Her short-term memory has suffered with age, Charles says, but she remembers most things from her past. Charles delivered the good news: Myles Garrett, the great-great grandson of cotton sharecroppers from Waskom, Texas, is the No. 1 pick of the NFL Draft.
Back at the party, Garrett is on Cloud Nine. He’d done it his way, surrounded by family, with his mother and father at his side. “Just being able to hold your loved ones knowing this is such a great moment of your life. I didn’t want to let that slip by,” he says. “I felt like anybody who had any positive impact in my life should be able to take part in this.”
And what about his mother’s last words before he got the call? The final advice that precipitated his life changing forever?
“It was about the Bose headphones,” he says with a chuckle. “They’re a sponsor. She said, Make sure you put those Bose headphones on the table so they can see.
“She’s all love, and she’s all business.”
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