It's almost unfair that Myles Garrett's first year playing SEC football immediately followed Jadeveon Clowney's last. Having broken Clowney's SEC freshman record for sacks with 11.5 last season, the comparisons to Clowney, the 2014 NFL Draft's No. 1 overall pick, are incessant.
But as a Sports Illustrated feature on the Texas A&M pass rusher suggests, the physical skills Garrett brings to the game aren't exactly fair, either.
And it's not as though the comparisons stop with Clowney, even in the Aggies' own building.
"We call him Batman because his body looks like the costume," coach Kevin Sumlin told SI. The Aggies' strength coach, Larry Jackson, said Garrett is a mix of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (explosiveness), action-movie actor Jean-Claude Van Damme (flexibility and strength), and a cat (ability to contort his body).
Somehow, the least outrageous of all those comparisons is probably the one to Peterson -- Jackson, after all, was a strength coach at Oklahoma when the Vikings star was in college at OU, so he at least is familiar with what Peterson could do in a workout at the time.
According to the report, a year in the Aggies' strength and conditioning program has resulted in a freakish 4.46 40-yard dash for the 6-foot-5, 260-pound defensive end. However, it's not as though there isn't some room for improvement in his sophomore season in 2015. Of his 11.5 sacks last year, all but three came against softer non-conference opponents, and he struggled to make an impact in games against the SEC's power-rushing teams such as LSU and Alabama.
But as the report notes, Garrett's focus and determination have him on the right path to make some strides.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread*.
