After watching the football games that didn’t count, the fact the Cleveland Browns were boat raced in the second half of each of the first two games indicated to us that depth might be a problem. That fear was confirmed when the team pared down the roster to 53 and there really wasn’t any big surprises.
Offensive lineman KT Levenson was a bit of an eyebrow raiser, but only because new offensive line coach George Warhop moved him to guard early in camp and reportedly was impressed. But Levenson struggled all last year when pressed into duty so it’s not as though they were cutting a starting player. And he was added to the practice squad.
We believe everyone was rooting for WR Luke Floreia, from Mentor, after his preseason performance, and his situation was a little complicated for us. We don’t see a world in which Jerry Jeudy will be happy being fourth on the depth chart behind rookies KC Concepcion, Denzel Boston, and second year player Isaiah Bond.
The Browns don’t need headaches in their locker room, so we would have seen what we could have gotten for him on the trade market.
The big news was the back injury for Dillon Gabriel that put him on injured reverse for four weeks and make rookie Taylen Green the third QB. We realize Green is raw, but after the way he played in the last exhibition game, the Browns had to keep him. He’s just that good of an athlete and we have no doubt a good NFL organization would have found a way to use him.
In fact, the Browns should figure out a way to use him in certain situations.
He may never be a starting quarterback in the NFL, but when you are downtrodden franchise, his talent is something they can’t pass up.
Speaking of the quarterbacks, a friend commented after the New England game that of the four QBs who played, Deshaun Watson played the worst. Of course, that’s why he was named the starter for the opener.
While the initial cuts were not surprising, we figured the Browns would be active in picking up players cut by other teams in order to build some of that depth. However, they only claimed one player, Toriano Pride, a cornerback who was the Bills 7th round pick in April.
This comes after they picked up Mekhi Blackmon from Indianapolis last week.
We are anxious to see the defense under new coordinator Mike Rutenberg with all the parts playing. We didn’t see much if any of the unit’s best players, DE Jared Verse, LB Carson Schwesinger, and CBs Denzel Ward and Tyson Campbell.
That the front office picked up two corners in the last couple of weeks should tell you their replacements didn’t flash in the preseason. On the other hand, in today’s NFL, you can never have too many cornerbacks.
There is still almost two weeks until the season opener at Jacksonville, and we would anticipate Andrew Berry, and his staff will be looking for players who can help. They would seem to need a lot of that.