You Don’t Split The Party
This is a letter to the Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett.
I’ve played/watched/streamed/dreamt about/planned a lot of table-top roleplaying games, [TTRPGs, if you’re unfamiliar with the acronym] including the obvious Dungeons & Dragons. [Also known as D&D, obvs] I don’t have the Malcolm Gladwell 10,00 hours in, but I do know my way around some dice, dry erase markers, and grid maps and minis. There are a lot of rules for the Dungeon Master [DM] and the players to remember: how combat ebbs and flows, do these abilities stack, how grapple works [Just kidding, nobody knows how grapple works.]. But there’s one party rule that everyone must remember, and it’s “don’t split the party”. You’re a group of humanoid individuals, all having some function with the group, and inevitably, you work best together. Separated, you’re weaker. Separated, you lose your strength together. Separated, you die.
I also have watched a lot of football. I may not be able to swim or spin move past a left tackle like you can, [Can anyone?] or punt/pass/kick the ball better than any of your teammates, but I likely do have the 10,000 hours in of watching the sport. I can tell you there are many on-and-off-field rules you follow as a member of an NFL team. One of the biggest is not abandoning a player, a teammate, a fan. You’ve done that now in requesting a trade. You’ve left your teammates and party members without one of their strongest PCs.
I bring this all up this way because I know you’re an avid D&D player. I’ve tried to come see you play, watched the streams of you playing with current and former teammates. You helped make a game I love cooler by being a part of it, and I will never turn my back on you for all of the things you’ve done for Cleveland, but you’ve turned your back on us as fans with requesting a trade. By mocking the general manager of the Browns with throwing his words back in his face, you’ve split yourself from this party. You’ve elevated yourself as better than the rest, a full-on main character moment when the game is played as a team.
Anecdotally, you are one the of the reasons the Cleveland Browns are in this mess with Deshaun Watson at quarterback, and it’s because a former teammate didn’t uphold the “don’t split the party rule”. When you swung a helmet at Mason Rudolph, [1d6+4 of damage for an improvised weapon and your significant strength score], Baker Mayfield was asked about it afterwards on the field, and gave an answer that didn’t satisfy you. An answer that broke the code of “stick up for your guy”. It created a wedge between the offensive and defensive leaders on the team, and helped push Mayfield out the door, which was blown open when Watson became available. Baker didn’t stick with the party, and he was dead to you all.
I know you know the rule because you brought it up this past season when Watson’s Achilles tendon snapped and fizzled and fans rained down cheers as he was carted off the field. You brought up how we stand with our brothers. You stuck up for a player that, by many and seemingly all accounts, hasn’t been giving it his all, yet you still chastized the fans that are now likely against you. Can you blame them?
The team has said they will not entertain offers for you, that they have no plans of dealing you away for draft picks and cap relief, and I applaud them for that, but you’ve done irrevocable damage to your reputation amongst Browns fans. Yes, we have a history of being the worst of the worst with regards to luck and record keeping, but we struggle together. We stand in front of the BBEG [Big Bad Evil Guy, in the D&D parlance] as a unit, and we attempt the Sisyphian effort of pushing the “Super Bowl boulder” up the hill united. Yet, you’ve now down the equivalent of stealing the dragon’s horde and hiding it from the group, of seeing the certain TPK [Total Party Kill] and choosing to run away. I hope you work out an extension and stay, that this was all a ploy to make yourself the highest paid non-QB in the league, as you rightfully deserve to be, but in the end, this is Cleveland. We all know the usual ending: you’ll get dealt away, the picks in return will be misses, and you’ll go on to superstardom elsewhere. But we are meant to be together, through this to the end. In true parent fashion, I’m not mad…I understand it…I’m just disappointed. We need our tank, and you’ve dropped your shield.
