A& M’s force
he’s not too uptight. He’s not all angry and mad.”
And then he goes out and bites quarterbacks in half.
“As soon as I step on the field, totally different person,” Garrett says. “As soon as I step off, I go back to who I’ve always been. It kind of throws them off, how I transition from going onto the field and I’ve got to turn into a leader and be this aggressive guy, and then I turn into this goofy kid who listens to all kinds of music.”
For A& M receiver Ricky Seals- Jones, it’s not the music or the personality transition, but the poetry.
“That threw me off,” he said. But they’ve learned.
“He marches to a different beat,” Sumlin says, “and he plays that way, too.”
Oh yeah, there’s that. At defensive end, Garrett has been a disruptive force since he set foot on campus: 28 sacks and 391⁄ tackles for losses. And the sta2 tistics don’t do justice to his impact.
“Myles can get back there to the quarterback before the quarterback even has time to get to his second read,” Kirk says. “That’s the most ridiculous thing. He can overtake a game if he wants to. He just has that power.”
A& M defensive back Armani Watts adds, “He’s a freakish athlete.”
Garrett has a 40- inch vertical leap and says he has run the 40- yard dash in under 4.5 seconds. He recently told Fox Sports he bench- pressed 485 pounds.
‘ REGULAR PERSON’
Yet Garrett might not even be the best athlete in his family. His mother was an All- America hurdler at Hampton. Older brother Sean Williams played in the NBA and now plays overseas. And sister Brea won an NCAA championship in the weight throw.
When Myles was one of the nation’s most sought- after recruits, Brea was already at Texas A& M, and that might be the biggest reason he ended up there, too, instead of somewhere like Alabama — or Ohio State or TCU, which had those paleontology tracks he wanted. Myles was difficult to decipher, Sumlin says.
“We couldn’t get a feel for him, because he just wouldn’t talk,” the coach says.
That hasn’t changed, by the way. Garrett remains soft- spoken, despite his stardom. But when he speaks, which isn’t all that often, he usually has something to say.
Oct. 8, after Texas A& M outlasted Tennessee in overtime, Garrett took time during a postgame interview to request prayers for those afflicted in Florida and Haiti by Hurricane Matthew.
“I’d like to say one more thing,” said Garrett, who spent a week in Haiti last spring on a mission trip with 27 other A& M athletes, including 14 football teammates. “For all those affected with Hurricane Matthew, I wanted to say can you give whatever you have supporting and praying for them — those in Florida and those in Haiti. Can ( you) just pray for them and support Mission of Hope? And know their endeavors. They’re trying to pursue not only prayers but them going out, actively helping them getting clothes, getting food, getting water for those who are without electricity or without anything right now. … You know, show some love. Maybe send some letters, send some money, maybe send some clothes you don’t need or canned food, it would be much appreciated. It would go a long way.”
Whether or not Garrett does choose to leave after this season for the NFL draft, he doesn’t see it as the be- all, endall. It’s just another item on a full plate.
“I’m just a person that played a game in the spotlight,” he says. “I’m a regular person. I’m a regular guy. As a kid I played games. As a kid I liked poetry. As a kid I liked drawing. And I never felt the need to stop doing anything. I never lost interest in them.”