How complete are Cleveland Browns after Jadeveon Clowney deal? | Pro Football Talk | NBC Sports

coming in white hair coming in green genevieve and clowney coming to cleveland on a one-year deal last year they wanted him on a three-year deal that was worth like somewhere between 50 and 60 million he didn't want that deal now he does the one-year deal worth up to 10 million which means it's worth less than 10 million to do certain things and you never know until you see the incentive package sometimes you literally have to be the super bowl mvp to get your full amount maybe he's got to be defensive player of the year he talked about that yesterday but uh chris we saw this coming it was his second visit to cleveland i'm surprised they did it before the draft what if they have some guy fall to them that's their highest rated pass rusher and he just happens to be there and they've given this contract to jadavian clowning maybe they still take the guy i don't know but i thought they'd wait until after the draft to go after damian clown well i think it gives them a little flexibility in the draft and i think where they're sitting probably there in the 20s they're probably looking at it like huh that's dicey difference making pass rusher territory i'm not sure if there's going to be that type of guy there in this draft so i think that's probably where that that thought comes in mike at least as far as not you know exhausting the draft for that position but man clowney nonetheless with this defense opposite of miles garrett man you got two number one picks two of the freakier guys in the nfl that we've seen in the league over the last 15 years or so as far as size speed the way they can change directions do all those things and of course it makes sense like we talked a little bit yesterday because of the scheme fit and everything like that life's going to be simple for should gideon county get wide rush the pastor do all that you know nice move by cleveland you're right they probably got to still get some people at some point at that position to to fill it out for depth but either way we know that the starting four sheldon richardson miles garrett and jedevian that that's pretty legit when you just say those three names right there well miles garrett first round pick first overall pick in 2017. sheldon richardson a first round pick of the jets in 2013. genivian clowney number one overall pick in 2014. tak mckinley a backup in that rotation pass rusher our first round pick of the falcons in 2017 clowney gives them chris 10 first round picks on the roster wow three number one overall picks on the roster from 2014 2017 2018 of course baker mayfield this browns team is different the browns is the browns is no longer applicable to the browns not with those first round picks that they have i can't imagine a time since the browns returned to the nfl in 1999 when they had that much talent that much now look some of these guys like mckinley he was available to be signed because he didn't live up to that first round status but still 10 first-round picks on the cleveland browns that would have been incomprehensible a few years no it's amazing they've done an unbelievable job of turning over their roster and i mean you you really look at it like you see here on this graphic i mean forget these names i mean there's there's a lot of other names not on this list that are really damn good too and i think when you take into account even with last year yeah okay you didn't have a guy like jodevion county you know some of the additions they've made in free agency here and you know guys like denzel ward were hurt you know kind of in and out of the lineup their other starting quarter greedy williams he wasn't out there you know the whole year so there there's guys on the roster already that they're going to be better with but i think when you just talk about clowney and then now they've addressed the safety position a little bit with john johnson from the rams anthony walker at linebacker we talked about that a bunch of the free agents at free agency they need a linebacker well anthony walker's their kind of guy you just look at their team and their roster mike and like awful what you said i mean the browns is the browns or maybe it's just the browns are awesome or the browns has got a really good roster is the real phrase because you look at it mike and you just go what's not to like about the way the team was built right now going into this season five years ago yeah i was talking about whether or not in five years time the browns would be back and i actually and i see the envelope all the time it's sitting on it's sitting on a surface downstairs in my office it says do not open until i think august 16 2021 i called my shot then that the browns will be regarded as a better organization than the cowboys in five years time so wow premature but not much is going to change between now and august right is it fair to say that right now the browns top to bottom overall are a better organization than the dallas cowboys well yes i mean we know this is a what have you done for me lately league and where are we right now as far as where we're sitting we're talking about the browns who won a playoff game and had the chiefs on the ropes and could have easily won that football game if it's not for a bounce of a ball the certain way and the north korea rule and all those type of things so yeah i don't think there's any doubt about that you know i you again the the the cowboys we talked yesterday a little bit about them the offense is in a good place there's a lot to be excited about there but defensively there's big time issues you know on that side of the ball so no i mean i i don't think it's even close i think the browns are clearly in a better state right now than the dallas cowboys now i went through 336 and won the hugh jackson tenure after see i i was confident in the browns when hugh jackson was the head coach so i'm glad i made it five years instead of three yeah uh and the fact that the cowboys continue to struggle to live up to their potential makes it a little bit easier but i i'm going to pop that thing open on august 16 and i'm going to read whatever i wrote five years ago and i'm pretty sure if my memory holds up which there's a chance it doesn't that that's exactly what i said apparently we're going to post a twitter poll and there's going to be people pete that think we're nuts for posting the question because right now the browns are the better team it's hard to get used to the idea of the browns being i know cowboys but get used to as you mentioned clowning and miles garrett teaming up clowney was asked about that reality yesterday here he is a lot has been made about you pairing up obviously with miles garrett and that your arrival will help him how much will playing with him help you a lot i've been getting double team off a lot in this league my career and uh i'm looking forward to playing with somebody dominant on the opposite side like a mouse gear who can draw a double team maybe i can go one on one more you know the key with judith cloudy though is this and i wrote this last night at psft what are the browns getting with jadavian clowny and it depends it depends on whether or not he's healthy and can stay healthy right and shereen williams added that on pftpm last night also motivated i think he's always motivated he plays through a lot of stuff and we don't know it and a lot of these guys don't wear that on their sleeves they don't walk around talking about how banged up they are right in part because they don't want anyone targeting whatever part of them is banged up i think the issue with clowning this goes back to i remember his rookie year he only played in four games that year he came down funny on his knee i'm not weird and he's hurt he's out for the rest of the year yeah and then he needed micro fracture surgery bone on bone conditioning his knee after only one year it's amazing in many respects that he's still able to play no doubt so i i think that it's easy to to be infatuated with the film of clowney when he's healthy and he's racking up the f up the play stat that we're still trying to get a live sports bureau to officially recognize but he's not going to give you that for 16 games he's played 16 games once in a seven year career one time he played in 16 games and my guess is every year he's always fighting through something yeah to get on the field every sunday no i mean mike i mean you you said it right i mean first off micro fracture surgery that's like a career ender for most guys he's hung in there i think that speaks to kind of the freak of nature he is you know as far as athletically in the build of his body and everything like that and even off that mike he's been on my podcast before and he said even with that bum knee like he can't he can't bend when he's past rushing because of it he can't put the pressure on it that he would have been able to before that injury so it's affected him but it doesn't matter but you know like like you're you're right when he's healthy he's amazing he's a wrecking ball he f's plays up everywhere the stats forget production it's all about disruption with clowney and yeah the injury thing is a real thing i think when you sign a guy like him the cleveland browns you've got to be just going wait we'd love we want we want 10 to 12 games and we want to be healthy for the playoffs that's what you got to be thinking like and and and the other thing with clowning just you know to piggyback a little bit off of the the question he was asked in the press conference the cleveland's a great signing for him you know just because of the things we just talked about yeah obviously you know miles garrett's going to be the guy that gets the attention he's going to get one-on-ones you know the last two teams he's been on the seahawks and the texans he's been like the guy the guy wait wait where's where's clowney where's clowney there's nobody else on their defense we gotta worry about where's he at send the back there chip him hit the tight end why you know tight end hit him while he's being blocked so he's always had the bull's eye on his back with the last two defenses he's been on too that doesn't help your you know health matters either uh so i think there's a lot of positives for him and of course the positives for cleveland if he can stay healthy you just look at it it's another position mike where you go wow the browns are like towards the top of the league in that position or that unit on their roster and it's pretty damn impressive that way we were rolling a highlight package there of jadavian clowney from last year most of those plays were from week one against the denver broncos and that's going to be the key chris not getting caught up in the fascination with what he can do if he's healthy early in the season manages practice reps limit his game snaps and do what you have to do to keep him healthy constantly monitor and keep him healthy for january forget about september and october because if you if you become in awe of what he can do you throw caution to the wind and you're not going to have him when the season's on the line and you're not gonna have him when you get to the playoffs and the the simple fact that we're presuming playoffs for the browns just shows you how far they've come yeah it's not even if it's not even if no when the browns get to the playoffs this year they need to have jadavian clowning healthy it is stunning how quickly the perception has changed of the cleveland browns no it's amazing it really is and it's like i feel like you know like like we just said a few minutes ago we haven't even seen them at their pinnacle yet is their full roster being healthy and everything like that that's what's exciting like but like with the clowny thing too mike take this into account it's a guy too who because of his contract situations i'm glad he signed right now too because now you know get a part of an offseason workout program hopefully there is some sort of otas but nonetheless a training camp he's been treated i mean cheated out of training camps the last two years because he was waiting to kind of be traded from the texans of the seahawks he got there late i believe if i remember uh correctly and then of course last year he sat on the sideline until late in training camp before he finally signed with a football team so it's good that it's happening now uh for sure for the player but like mike that's what i was talking about with the browns i mean you go through it mike right i mean offensive line arguably the best in football wide receivers you know when healthy i mean that that's a pretty special tandem i think they'd be in the conversation of top five duos in football right running back duos i i don't know is there a better one i don't think there is you know you talk about the d-line i know there's the if of clowney but when you just talk about the three names we brought up earlier you go that's one of the better units in football i mean there there's four or five the tight end play is up there like that i mean so there's four or five units we've talked about where you go they're towards the cream of the crop and the whole league at their position unit and that's why i think we're going brown's playoffs so we're not even saying if or whatever else we're just going yeah it's happening points bet has the browns at a minus 170 proposition to make the playoffs you got to bet 170 to win 100 the steelers in contrast are plus 135. there probably hasn't been a year in the last i don't know 50 where the browns would have been regarded as a better chance of making the playoffs than the steelers but that's kind of where we are where's the weakness in the cleveland browns where's the one thing if you're a browns fan and you're tempted to count your chickens what's the one thing that would have you concerned about whether or not they're gonna hatch well i think the the defense is where you do go maybe that like again the back the back unit's a little unproven denzel ward's showed great promise you know when he is healthy he's he's damn good he really is he's one of the better corners in football but that's been a little iffy you know and then the other corner position and the safety spots have not really been solidified so i think that's the thing we got to see you know and linebacker as we talked about a lot you know before free agency is another issue they didn't they don't have their their fred warner their miles jack their kenneth murray you know their cam chancellor you know kj wright they they don't have those two linebackers in that safety yet they got john johnson he can fill that one role you know they're hoping anthony walker can do that from the colts you know but but i think that's the one area i look at at least be unproven and have questions about about you know how good they can really be what about baker mayfield yeah what do we really think about him right now we were talking about the quarterbacks of the 2018 draft class josh allen superstar lamar jackson superstar josh rosen back up in san francisco sam darnold dumped to the panthers for peanuts in comparison to what the jets gave up to get him where's baker mayfield sit right now where is he yeah i mean i from the way the year ended i don't know how you can't be really excited about what we saw from baker i mean baker really take care of the football yes okay but made a lot of big time plays and throws as the year went on and he got more confident within that offense and everything like that so i mean you know league wise league wide wise mike i don't know i mean i'm certainly going to say he's in the top half of the nfl right now there's no doubt about that with the the the power in his arm you know he fixed a few little things mechanically last year that helped him control the football better too to where we didn't see the ball spray and then of course interception the touchdown ratio it's a totally different game so you know he just played a cleaner cleaner way of playing last year but i think the big thing is too when shots were there or plays were there to be had he made them so what do you think where i mean you're not saying top ten but right on maybe the edge of it what do you what do you say trending in the right direction my concern last year was that he was closer to kirk cousins than patrick mahomes yeah on that scale of what happens when things start to go sideways right all due respect to kirk cousins when things start to go sideways it's collapse it's try to get out of the pocket sometimes and get gobbled up before you can get three steps away he doesn't have the athletic ability mayfield has enough to buy just enough time or also running the offense in a way where he rarely gets in those spots things are clicking and this gets back to the genius of kevin stefanski and chris remember when we were talking about your quarterback rankings last year one of the things you saw with baker mayfield was a slippage of a lot of the fundamentals where his toes are pointing right when when you bump up freddie kitchen's the head coach and the quarterbacks coach i think it was ken zampeezy yeah remember the offensive line coach who was the star of hard knocks that year that we just got exposed to more dysfunction than we ever with mr big belly sans said yeah yeah right yeah he he was the one who said hey zampeez he's the reason mayfield had a solid 2018 2019 he regressed and 2020 that's when we saw the uptick so you still need the coaching you need to have people who are taking that lump of clay and molding it into the best that it can be and we saw the difference in the statistics as you said the plummeting of the interceptions baker mayfield moving in the right direction and i i would suspect that stefanski who's both worked with cousins and mayfield now would say that mayfield has a higher ceiling than kirk cousins i would think so we're being candid about it but uh yeah and that leads to the question of when do they pay baker mayfield right and the better he gets the more expensive it's going to get but these are all problems that the cleveland browns haven't had yet but he do they returned to the nfl in 1999 as the cleveland browns so it really is amazing i would be and this is just the way i'm wired i'm i live in my fears way too much if i were a browns fan right now i would just be waiting for something i would just be waiting for that hammer to fall i would not be not you dr state of affairs yeah that's just i i know i would suspect it's just a matter of time before that boomerang comes back around and hits me right in the face i i i get it i guess if i was a cleveland browns to a fan too i'd probably probably be the same way like all right wait it's going too smooth right now what's going to happen yeah something bad is going to happen right i i certainly can understand that but man just from the way it looks you know from above right now they should be happy and feeling like really good about their chances for the 2021 season you know i mean baker mayfield stefanski in that offense i think the biggest thing stefanski did for baker mayfield and the cleveland browns football team is he played to the strength of their football team which was wait we have an overpowering dominant offensive line and i think between that and then going wait we also have maybe the best duo of running backs in football and they played to the running game and that helped out their defense which wasn't special by any means last year and it helped baker mayfield slowly get accustomed to the offense more and more comfortable until we got to the end of the year and they get on a run and he can just when when he needed to he could let it rip and make big plays and started to show a few moments of like hey there's nothing there but oh baker he he escaped out of the pocket and made a 20-yard completion even though the defense kind of won the play that's that's got to be you know uplifting for the whole team and the organization and baker mayfield all together hi i'm mike tarico and thanks for watching make sure to hit subscribe for the latest news and highlights from nbc sports

Channel: NBC Sports

Views: 78,234

Rating: 4.88169 out of 5

Keywords: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA, Golf, Athlete, Tennis, Olympics, Cleveland Browns, Jadeveon Clowney, Pro Football Talk, Mike Florio, Chris Simms

Id: nYKLbG6uv_s

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021