Myles Garrett corrected the reporter when asked about his injured foot.
“Feet,” he said Friday.
The five-time Pro Bowl defensive end again declined to disclose the exact diagnosis of the injury that caused him to miss a practice last week and two this week but revealed both feet are affected. He hopes they will continue to get better and not bother him as consistently throughout the season but acknowledged surgery could be necessary after the season.
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“We talked about it, but that’s something that we’ll probably talk about further down the line,” Garrett said. “Hopefully the pain and everything else is something that we deal with and it goes away. But the issue itself is something that I’ll probably have to deal with for however long I end up playing. So it’s just about managing that and playing through it.”
That’s the plan for Sunday vs. the Giants (0-1) at Huntington Bank Field, as Garrett will play. He returned to practice Friday and was limited after sitting out Wednesday and Thursday.
“Don’t feel 100 percent but feel good enough to go out there and make a difference,” he said. “So we’ll go out there and do that.”
Garrett, the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year, popped up on the injury report last week then played 41 of 60 defensive snaps in the victory over the Jaguars. He had a strip-sack for the second straight game to open the season and vowed to downplay the injury and play through it.
Coach Kevin Stefanski said he looked good Friday.
“He looked like himself,” he said.
Garrett had a pair of surgeries to correct flat feet, one when he was 11 and the other when he was 12.
“His bones were collapsed,’’ Audrey, his mother, told Cleveland.com in 2021. “He had no arch, no anything. So they put in arches and they snipped a tendon in the back that was too tight.’’
Garrett was asked if the current injury goes back to that issue.
“Not completely, but it probably has something to do with it from those events,” he said.
Garrett has demonstrated toughness throughout his career, missing only one game due to injury since the start of his second season in 2018. That absence followed a scary one-car accident in 2022, and he returned the following week despite multiple injuries. He missed two games on the COVID-19 list in 2020, then finished the season despite compromised lungs.
He said the feet were “still painful” Friday after not practicing for two days and explained the process of getting ready.
“It’s just trying to get it as well as I can, really try to lower the amount of inflammation and manage the pain until Friday,” he said. “And then definitely got to get some reps and some high-speed reps on my legs, get some running in so that I don’t have to worry about anything else like soft-tissue injuries, hamstring injuries, or anything like that. So just trying to take really the high-speed load off until Friday and then see how it feels, see how well I can go. Feels good, lock and load, let’s go. But until then we’re letting it ride.”
The injury was already bothering him against the Jaguars when he sprinted to try to chase down quarterback Trevor Lawrence on a 33-yard scramble.
“It didn’t help,” Garrett said. “I had to take a little second to regroup, but got back out there and continued to play.”
Coordinator Jim Schwartz rotates the defensive linemen, and Garrett’s looking for the best balance of rest and repetitions.
“Obviously you get tired when you’re going back-to-back-to-back,” he said. “But the warmer I get and the more reps I get, it starts to feel more comfortable and then once you start to sit for a little bit in those lulls, then it kind of gets cold and things of that nature.
“So it definitely helps to where I’m not taking too many plays at a time and that’s just better on my body for the long term. But it’s also good to be out there for a little bit and to make sure I get warmed up and I feel like I can move.”
Garrett, who will make his 100th regular-season start Sunday, has a franchise-record 90.5 sacks, which ranks second in the NFL since he entered the league in 2017. Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt has 98.5. Garrett tied for the third-fastest player to reach 90 sacks Sunday, doing it in 102 games.
He has all the tools as one of the league’s premier pass rushers. If the sore feet rob him of a bit of speed or bend around the edge, he’ll try to make up for it in other ways.
“It does make you lock in on your technique and your fundamentals, knowing that maybe things will be a little bit slow or maybe this cut won’t be quite as crisp or whatever it is,” he said. “Knowing that you’ll have to be a little bit better somewhere else to supplement where you’re deficient at. We’ll see when I get there on Sunday how deficient I am, if I am. But that is something that I have to be aware of and we’ll take into account.”
Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas will be his primary opposition. Thomas was the No. 4 pick in 2020.
“He’s very talented,” Garrett said. “He’s strong, he’s on the taller side and he’s got long arms and he’s able to kick well. He doesn’t allow a lot of guys to beat him on the edge and you have to be a little bit patient. You have to play the game a little bit and don’t play into his.
“So it’ll be a task when we as edge rushers go against him and we all look forward to the challenge. He’s one of the best ones.”
