Myles Garrett will miss multiple games for Browns with high ankle sprain

Thursday morning, the Cleveland Browns provided an update on the status of defensive end Myles Garrett. Rather than expressing my frustration in words, I’ll allow the GIF below to do the talking.

The Browns announced that Garrett “has been diagnosed with a high ankle sprain” and that his status “will be updated in a couple weeks.”

That definitely puts him out of the opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the team’s first road game against the Baltimore Ravens, two key division games right off the bat. For those who know about high ankle sprains, too, you can’t just come back from them or “tough them out.” It’s realistic to think that Garrett could miss 4-6 weeks.

Per Mary Kay Cabot of the Plain Dealer, it was a “freak injury” during Wednesday’s practice, when an unnamed teammate “stepped on the side of Garrett's ankle.” While one would like to think the Browns’ defense that was so good during the preseason without Garrett will still be OK, it’s hard to make that argument. The competition during the regular season will be much stiffer, and now all of a sudden, the team will be scrambling to see who starts in Garrett’s place — Carl Nassib? Nate Orchard? These are two guys who have shown promise, but struggled during their stints as starters over the past two seasons.

This also marks the second year in a row that the team’s top pick has suffered an unfortunate injury early in the season. Last year, a teammate stepped on Corey Coleman’s hand during practice, forcing him to miss a great deal of action and halting the momentum he had started to build.

Garrett has shown to be a fast healer, so hopefully his treatments go well and he won’t miss more than a fourth of the regular season.