CLEVELAND (AP) — Myles Garrett was in no mood to celebrate his birthday or making history.
Garrett recorded two sacks to become the first NFL player with 14 sacks in four straight seasons, but the Cleveland Browns couldn't do anything on offense during a 20-3 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Garrett turned 29 and turned in another stellar performance in this dreadful season for the Browns (3-13), who had hoped to take another step after making the playoffs a year ago.
But nothing has gone right in Cleveland, and now the team is facing another offseason of change.
Garrett has 14 sacks this season and 102 1/2 in his eight-year career. He's making the case for a second consecutive NFL defensive player of the year honor. But there isn't any award that will ease the pain of his fourth double-digit loss season.
“At the end of the day, we play for wins,” Garrett said. “The individual stuff is great. It's nice, you want to be remembered for all of the above. But cities remember you for wins and bringing championships back home.
“That's always been my intention. So, I want to get back on track, want to get back to winning, whether it's the last one or whatever's in store next season.”
Garrett recently made it clear that he does not want to be part of another rebuild in Cleveland, saying he wanted to see the team's plans to improve the roster. His comments opened the possibility that he could ask for a trade if he isn't satisfied with the Browns' outlook.
After the Browns dropped their fifth in a row to finish 2-6 at home, Garrett said he never considered that it might be his last game in Cleveland.
“I don't think about that kind of stuff,” he said. “My mission is to go out there and try to help this team win as a leader, as a brother, as a teammate. That's what I solely focus on. I'm not looking into the future. Next thing on my mind is recovery, looking at film, how can we improve going to the Ravens and try to play spoiler for them.”
Garrett hasn't given up. For the second week in a row, he displayed extraordinary effort while chasing a scrambling quarterback without getting a sack.
He won't quit.
“He's the best pass rusher in the game,” Browns guard Joel Bitonio said. “You could ask all the players, all the coaches. He's probably the guy they fear going up against the most. He's dynamic. He's a special player. He's doing his thing. I hope we can get some stuff around him so he can win some games around here.”
Garrett twice went into the medical tent during the game. He slowly walked to his locker to get dressed before turning on some music that brought a little life into an otherwise somber Cleveland locker room.
Garrett laughed when asked if he's pushing himself to the end.
“I'm just old,” he said. “I'm 29. I'm not going to be dragging myself through the finish line. I'll be fine by Friday, Saturday and be ready to go. I always am."
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Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (95) runs drills before an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, left, talks with defensive end Myles Garrett (95) before an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (95) celebrates after sacking Miami Dolphins quarterback Tyler Huntley during the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.
The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.
Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a U.S. military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.
But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people. It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.
Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.
The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.
Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.
By 2019, a U.S.-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as U.S. forces closed in on him.
Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.
And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.
Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.
The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralized alliance.
Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently. Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.
The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on U.S. soil in several years.
Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West.”
Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who traveled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.
In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defense Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.
But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas’ rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.
The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups Wednesday.
“If it’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.
President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
This undated passport photo provided by the FBI on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, shows Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (FBI via AP)
A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025. The FBI said they recovered an Islamic State group flag, which is black with white lettering, from the vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
