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Sam Craft/Associated Press

Strengths: Athleticism, burst, array of moves, instincts and awareness.

Weaknesses: Some technical flaws.

The best defensive players force opponents to play offense with one hand tied behind their backs.

Deion Sanders took half the field away from opposing quarterbacks. Lawrence Taylor dictated where the opponent's tight end lined up and forced offensive coordinators to invent a new position (the H-back). Ed Reed erased the deep middle from the playbook.

Watch Myles Garrett against a top offense and you will see the same thing. Opponents run everything to the right side of the field: sprintouts, rollouts, sweeps, swing passes. Anything that's headed in Garrett's direction is misdirection. Opponents like UCLA played as if the football field was slanted to one side like a warped pool table.

Garrett was the top prospect in the 2017 draft class before he put up science-fictiony workout results at the combine. Then he became a generational prospect. He has the potential to be a Julius Peppers or Simeon Rice, if not a Bruce Smith.

The only knocks, besides the usual draft prattle about "motor," are little technical issues. Garrett lowers his head and shoulders into blockers now and then. He gets swallowed by interior linemen if he doesn't win off the line when he moves inside to 3-tech tackle.

Everything else is cherry, right down to his ability to read screens and reverses and his understanding of his role as a sacrifice defender on blitzes.

Nitpickers and contrarians will point to his "low" 8.5-sack total in 2016 as a possible red flag.

Sanders didn't record many interceptions in his best seasons.

The great ones beat you before you even get a chance to challenge them.

Give the Browns a little credit. They covet Mitchell Trubisky and may still land him. But they stared into the abyss—every mirror in the Browns organization is an abyss—and chose to make a straightforward choice to select a great player instead of finding a new and creative way of outsmarting themselves. The Browns are going to earn a ton of grades this weekend. Not all of them will be good. But they are off to an encouraging start.

Grade: A