Stay calm, Cleveland Browns fans.
No, the team isn’t trading Myles Garrett — the stud defensive end who ended up serving a six-game punishment for hitting Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph in the head with a helmet during a game — to the Seattle Seahawks.
But for a little while on Monday, that rumor sent some people scrambling, with attempts to try to find out if it was true. And it was debunked fairly quickly … and then the world found out it was a Reddit user who started it all as a prank of sorts.
Let’s start at the beginning: A Reddit user who had correctly reported about the Seahawks releasing center Justin Britt was on Seattle radio station KJR and said Garrett would be going to the Hawks:
Not long after that, it was very much debunked by Yahoo’s Charles Robinson and ESPN Seattle radio host Jake Heaps:
So what happened here? It turns out this “insider” was out to get revenge for the Fail Mary — the 2012 play in which the Seahawks beat the Packers thanks to replacement officials calling a touchdown on a last-second Hail Mary that should have been offensive pass interference or an interception instead — nearly eight years later.
In a Reddit post, the “insider” said this: “I do know a player on the team and the Britt news was legit. I used that to fabricate a trade and see how far I could go with it.”
And that’s that.
