This is the collateral damage of the Deshaun Watson debacle. This is what happens when the biggest trade in franchise history turns into the heaviest anchor on a team still thrashing to get out from under it.

And yet this was always the smartest move for the Browns to finally pull themselves out of the grave they’ve been digging for 30 years.

Nobody wants to trade Myles Garrett. No general manager wakes up excited to willingly move on from one of the greatest players in franchise history and easily the best since the team returned to the NFL in 1999, but the Browns left themselves with little choice when their biggest swing for a franchise quarterback disintegrated into $230 million of injuries, allegations and disappointments.

I wrote last year when the Cleveland Browns signed Garrett to a massive extension that they should’ve traded him instead. It’s the fastest way out of the mess they created for themselves.

By obtaining Jared Verse from the Los Angeles Rams and a future first-round pick in 2027, among other draft picks, the Browns acquired a young pass rusher to replace Garrett and extra draft capital to continue their never-ending search for a franchise quarterback.

For years, Garrett made clear he didn’t want to be the next Joe Thomas, a Hall of Fame player whose career died on the vine with a franchise that could never figure out how to win. Garrett has been vocal about his desire to play for a winning organization. He did nothing but tell the truth during his Super Bowl week publicity tour last year, when he went public with his trade demands, about how far away the Browns were from winning. Try as they might, the Browns failed for nine years to build a team around the most ferocious pass rusher in the NFL.

Whether it was always the plan to move Garrett this offseason, or whether it became the plan once Garrett’s preferred choice for head coach, Jim Schwartz, was passed over in January is a question that will likely be answered in the coming days and months, perhaps by Garrett himself.

Nevertheless, this was always the way out because, as good as Garrett is, he isn’t a quarterback and therefore cannot impact winning at nearly that level. For all of Garrett’s greatness, the Browns have managed to win just eight games over the past two years. He had five sacks in a game against the New England Patriots last season — and the Browns lost by 19 points.

When trying to decipher the value of edge rushers to winning football games, look no further than the Cowboys, who went 7-10 during Micah Parsons’ last season in Dallas. They went 7-9-1 last year without him.

Defensive ends are a luxury when a roster’s quarterbacks are collectively the worst in the league, which the Browns’ are. The team has quietly been sending messages that Shedeur Sanders likely isn’t viewed as the long-term answer at the position, and nothing shrieks that louder than this trade.

If the team had been convinced Sanders was the answer, there would be no reason to move on from Garrett. Instead, the team keeps hinting that Watson is likely to start in 2026, despite the three seasons he played for Cleveland being a complete disaster. This move signals the Browns still don’t believe they have their answer at the game’s most important position. That’s why they traded for another first-round pick in a 2027 draft that is expected to have a bounty of quarterbacks. That’s the only reason to move on from Garrett now.

Until the Browns find a quarterback they believe in, nothing else matters.

At 30, Garrett is hardly nearing retirement, but he also doesn’t align with the ages of the rest of the core of this team. I’ve written for years that the Browns’ sole focus right now is getting a product on the field that is marketable when their new domed stadium opens in 2029. That means having a quarterback they believe can win at a high level by ’27 or ’28 when they need to start selling personal seat licenses. This is yet another signal of that.

As for Andrew Berry, he is now stained as the general manager who orchestrated both the worst trade in sports history and the GM who traded away the Browns’ best player of the last 30 years. Most GMs would be fired for one or the other, but Berry has managed to survive both. It’s really quite a feat. Yet the Haslam family continues to stand by their man.

Berry for months — the last year, actually — has maintained he had no interest in trading Garrett. Now his only way to survive in this role is to hit on a quarterback in the 2027 draft. The Browns have ample ammunition to move up the board if they so choose.

Jimmy Haslam’s messaging since the end of the season has been that it’s time to win. It never made sense. I thought Haslam was much closer to the truth when, after the 2025 season ended, he said the Watson trade was a swing and a miss that it would take years to dig out from under.

The Browns, it seems, have come back to reality with where this roster is positioned and what they still need. This is a sad day in Browns history, but it was also the necessary next step.

There is plenty to blame the Deshaun Watson trade for since he arrived in Cleveland. Now you can blame him for this, too.

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Representative Tom Kean Jr. has not been seen in public for nearly three months. The mystery of his disappearance grew gradually, beginning with a news update in March by a political website noting that the New Jersey congressman had missed a week’s worth of votes in Washington.

He last voted in Congress on March 5.

Missing a few votes isn’t necessarily cause for alarm. But after the Easter recess, two of Mr. Kean’s Republican colleagues in Congress from New Jersey told reporters they had been told nothing about Mr. Kean’s whereabouts. Soon, other Republican leaders said they were upset that their texts to Mr. Kean had gone unanswered. The story eventually gained traction when Dan Scharfenberger, Mr. Kean’s chief of staff, told The New York Times in May, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

Ahead of a congressional primary Tuesday, in which he faces no Republican opposition, Mr. Kean’s only known campaign events involved making phone calls to a New Jersey political journalist and to Republican leaders in his district, one of whom asked if the missing congressman needed anything.

“Just your prayers,” Mr. Kean replied, according to the official, Joe LaBarbera, chairman of the Republican Party in Sussex County.

Mr. Kean’s aides have attributed his absence to a “personal medical issue,” which they have refused to describe, beyond assurances since April that he is expected to fully recover and return to work soon.

On the day of the congressional primary, the mystery of the missing legislator remains frustratingly unsolved. But it was not for lack of trying.

Here’s how Times reporters attempted to uncover the truth.

In late April, The Times filed a request under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act with the police department in Westfield, N.J., where Mr. Kean lives. Were there any calls to 911 or emergency services from his address? There were not.

Every political campaign files a list of donors with the Federal Election Commission. We called more than a dozen donors, including Mary Van Lieu, a former Republican mayor of Pohatcong, N.J., and Michael Fedorko, who runs public safety in Atlantic County, N.J., and donated $600 to Mr. Kean's re-election. None of them had any information about Mr. Kean’s condition.

Shoe Leather

Beginning in April, a Times reporter visited Mr. Kean’s primary residence in Westfield, N.J., several times. Some neighbors said they had not seen Mr. Kean or noticed any changes at the house. All declined to be quoted. A knock on Mr. Kean’s door went unanswered.

Digging into Mr. Kean’s disclosures from when he was a state senator, a reporter found the address of Mr. Kean’s vacation home in Bay Head, N.J., an exclusive community on the Jersey Shore where Bruce Springsteen also has a home. In May, she paid the house a visit. Advertising fliers were stuck in the front door. There was also a note left in April advising residents to move their cars. It seemed that no one had visited the home for some time.

Mr. Kean also owns a stake in his family’s estate on Fishers Island, N.Y., off the Connecticut coast of Long Island Sound. Like most of the largest homes on the island, the Kean estate sits on a private road behind a staffed guard gate. Pedestrians may walk past the gate, but only residents and their guests are allowed to drive on the eastern part of the island. Reporters arrived by ferry and interviewed people in the island’s public areas, determining that Mr. Kean had not been seen there.

Deep Sourcing

What seemed especially confounding to reporters is the fact that Mr. Kean is so well known in the state; in addition to his own quarter-century tenure in government, his great-grandfather was a U.S. senator, his grandfather was a congressman and his father, Tom Kean, was a popular governor. Reporters sought out former advisers to Mr. Kean’s father, those who ran campaigns against Mr. Kean, Republican Party leaders of counties and municipalities around New Jersey, Democratic Party officials and Mr. Kean's longtime campaign lawyer. Yet despite dozens of phone calls to people who might have a connection to the congressman, no one had any insight into his condition.

A reporter also called about 20 hospitals in New Jersey, New York, Virginia and the District of Columbia. None had Mr. Kean listed as a patient.

Then, months after his most recent vote in Congress, Mr. Kean gave a phone interview to the political website, The New Jersey Globe, on May 21. He confirmed that he would run for re-election, but otherwise appeared to reiterate the talking points that his staff had given in his absence. “My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” he said. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail."

On Tuesday, as voters in New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District cast their ballots, it remains uncertain whether Mr. Kean will emerge in time for the event, and his campaign has no party planned for the evening. With no opposition, his victory is assured. In November, though, he will face well-funded Democratic opposition in what is considered one of the most competitive House races in the country.

A correction was made on

June 2, 2026

: 

An earlier version of this article misstated which of Tom Kean’s forebears had been a senator. It was his great-grandfather; his grandfather was a congressman.

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When Sterling Nasa, 21, woke up on Saturday he could not have imagined he would soon be performing in front of 2,000 people.

On that day — which he described as “run-of-the-mill” — he helped a friend with a student film and drove around town to run some errands. Later on, he was planning to watch the movie “La La Land” accompanied by live music at the Darling Harbour Theater at a convention center in Sydney, Australia.

But by the evening, this regular day had turned into a once-in-a-life time opportunity.

“I’ve obviously hit the algorithm to some degree,” he said of his newfound internet celebrity. “I don’t think I’ve fully rationalized it yet.”

The commotion started during an interval after the first half of “La La Land,” the 2016 musical that centers on the love story of the aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) who meets the ambitious musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling).

The crowd was starting to realize that something was amiss when the interval went on for longer than they expected and Justin Hurwitz, the Academy Award-winning composer of the film’s score, came onstage.

“Is anybody like an amazing sight reader?” Mr. Hurwitz asked the crowd, adding that one of the musicians had fallen ill and had to go home. For the show to go on, he needed someone to step in.

The request, to perform with a professional orchestra with no preparation, was nothing short of daunting. And in this case, Mr. Nasa had to flip his own pages, working his way through the show with new challenges waiting at every turn.

It was the musical equivalent of the question “is there a doctor in the house?” Mr. Nasa said.

As a clutch of hands went up at Mr. Hurwitz’s request, Scarlett Pearce — the friend with whom Mr. Nasa was attending the performance — took charge.

“I was kind of a maniac,” she said in a phone interview on Tuesday, adding that she shouted into the 2,000-person crowd that Mr. Nasa was the man for the job.

“He was just like, ‘I don’t know, maybe,’” Ms. Pearce said, as her friend tentatively raised his hand. “I grabbed his hand and put it in the air for him.”

“I don’t think he was very happy with me at the start,” Ms. Pearce, 21, said. But, she told her friend: “You’ll thank me in 10 minutes.”

After some encouragement, Mr. Nasa got up from his chair and went toward the stage where Mr. Hurwitz and the orchestra were waiting, to applause from the audience.

“I just tried not to fall down the stairs,” Mr. Nasa said.

Once he got to the stage, Mr. Hurwitz asked him for his name and handed him off to the keyboard technician who gave him the briefest of rundowns.

Half a minute later, it was showtime.

“I was pretty nervous,” Mr. Nasa said in a phone interview. But about 10 minutes into his performance, Mr. Nasa said, he found his groove and started appreciating the moment. “When else are you going to have this opportunity? You just have to go for it.”

The performance included a solo on the keyboard during the song “Start a Fire,” which is sung and performed by John Legend in the film. Mr. Nasa improvised and received loud cheers from the audience.

For Mr. Nasa, his brush with fame came at a pivotal time. He is about to graduate from the University of Sydney where he is studying international relations.

His real passion, though, is music. Mr. Nasa said his impromptu performance gave him the confidence to consider pursuing it as a career. Holding his own among such skilled musicians, he said, shows that his goals were “not completely out of reach.”

Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.

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