Todd Monken walked away from Thursday’s joint practice with the Buffalo Bills seeing something Browns fans haven’t always been able to count on: a team that looked like it fit.
“The one thing I would say, maybe it was just me, it didn’t look like we were out of place. It looked like we belonged.
That’s all we wanted to see: do we belong? Does our first eleven give us a chance to move the ball and score?
I felt that way today.”
For a franchise that has spent years searching for stability since returning to the NFL in 1999, that kind of assessment carries real weight. The Browns have cycled through head coaches, shuffled general managers, burned through draft picks, and lived through too many ugly losses and quarterback changes to count. More often than not, they’ve looked like a team trying to catch up to the moment instead of control it.
Thursday felt different, at least in Monken’s eyes.
He pointed to the offense and the line in particular, noting that the unit is still working through injuries but showed enough to leave him encouraged.
“There were some mistakes there, but we made some plays. Over the course of whatever amount of snaps, you wanted to see us be able to run it.
We hit a few balls down the field. We hit some short third downs, So, you wanted to see it all.
I may feel different in two or three hours, but as of right now, I left the field going, ‘We’ve got some guys to work with.’”
That doesn’t turn a joint practice into proof of anything. It doesn’t guarantee the Browns have solved the problems that have tripped them up for so long. And it certainly doesn’t erase the possibility that things could unravel on September 13 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
But for one afternoon, Cleveland didn’t look lost. It looked like a professional football team.
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Browns Suddenly Face A Bigger Edge Problem Than Expected
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The timing matters because Cleveland already entered camp with some depth questions at defensive end, and Wright has been part of the group the Browns were counting on for steady snaps. If he has to miss time, Isaiah McGuire and others are in line for a bigger workload, which only adds pressure to a position the Browns can ill afford to thin out. [Read more 🡒]