First impressions of the Browns’ new additions: Quincy Williams, Tytus Howard and a rebuilt line

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Hey everybody, welcome to the Orange & Brown Talk podcast.

Dan Lobby, Mary Kig Cabot, Ashley Bassack with you here.

It is Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day.

A meteor flew through Northeast Ohio today.

It's been an interesting day here.

In Northeast Ohio.

But of course, we're still sitting here talking.

Cleveland Brown's football on a Tuesday.

And look, if you're a subscriber,

you've heard some press conference audio over the weekend

that we put up on the feed.

So you know that we've heard from now three of the offensive linemen.

That was before Titus Howard had talked.

So we've heard from the three new offensive linemen.

We've heard from the newest linebacker, Quincy Williams.

And so we're going to spend a little bit of time today talking about

sort of what we heard, what stood out from these guys.

And Mary K, we haven't given Quincy Williams a ton of time

other than kind of when he signed.

In fact, that night we were about to hit record.

Then he signed.

Then we talked a little bit about him.

And he gave, I mean, of all the press conferences,

all the Zoom calls that we had.

His was certainly the most all over the place,

the most interesting, the most exciting.

I think the thing that stood out to me

and just looking at some of the reaction

from some clips we put up and some of that audio from the press conference

was, if he is the player, he says he is.

If he is still that guy, that cheetah, right?

He says he plays linebacker like a cheetah that just woke up in the morning,

chasing a gazelle.

If he is that guy, he's a very interesting pairing with Carson's

messenger and whatever the rest of that linebacker room looks like.

And assuming this still has a lot of the DNA of what Jim Schwartz

was running here, those linebackers, that's kind of the point.

You are the cheetah chasing the gazelle.

I could see how Quincy Williams could excel here.

Right. I mean, he brings a lot of speed.

He brings a lot of hustle.

He brings sideline to sideline playmaking.

And he brings a ton of energy.

My goodness, from a personality standpoint,

at least from what we see of Carson's messenger,

those two guys couldn't be more different, right?

I mean, Carson is a little bit reserved.

He's kind of finding his way a little bit in his press conferences with us,

not so with Quincy Williams.

Quincy Williams wears his emotions on his sleeve.

He talks a big game.

He's very, very dynamic and he's just got a ton of personality.

He's funny.

We haven't had a guy like this in the locker room in a little while.

I would actually say that he reminds me

from a personality standpoint.

Like, he's got a little bit of Dave and a Joho in him.

Like, there's a little bit of color,

a little bit of something going on there.

So, you know, we always knew that the chief was going to bring it strong,

and that's what we're getting so far from Quincy Williams.

But above all, I think that it really does give Mike Routenberg his guy,

one of his own guys that can come in here,

and be his and force her a little bit.

Set the tone, set the bar very, very high,

and help implement the Rudy way.

And I think when we talk about Devon Bush,

who obviously left to go to Chicago and sort of the revival of his career,

I think a big part of that was he landed in a system in that Jim Schwartz scheme

that really simplified things,

and really just sort of put him in a position where he could use his athleticism

play downhill.

And I think we saw that in his first year,

and then his second year kind of went to a different level,

and he was doing a little bit more.

I think, Ashley, maybe with Quincy Williams,

again, if this Mike Routenberg system is similar,

which it seems like it will be,

if that linebacker play is just Seaball Getball,

I think this could be a situation where he gets here,

and he gets into this system,

and that does allow him to sort of,

I don't know, revive his career as the right way

to put it, but kind of put last year behind him,

and sort of show that he's still the guy he was a couple of years ago.

Yeah, I mean, I do think because of that,

this system with the right veterans get into it.

And again, this is all predicated upon,

especially the front of this defense,

is it going to be similar to what they did with Jim Schwartz?

And I think it will, because it's re-react,

and the deliming you're attacking so much,

I think it allows veterans who the game has slowed down for already

to really play faster in it.

And I think, like his personality,

certainly fits in this style of defense,

if his play is anything like the personality and the system,

is like it was the last three years,

I think he could potentially, like you said,

and it's not like a reviving his career,

but I think of a guy like Malik Collins,

who he's a veteran, he was never a guy who was, quote,

unquote, bad, but he had a career year here.

Like you could potentially be talking about a career year

for Quincy Williams, who is in a veteran stage of his career.

He's not the new kid in the position room anymore,

even though he's new in Cleveland.

So I think that is exciting when you look at him and we've talked about,

oh, could this actually be an upgrade over Devon Bush?

Like you think about the physical traits and some of the things

Quincy Williams has already shown?

That's why getting him in this system now.

And to that point, I think the Malik Collins comparison is interesting

because like to that point, you know,

Malik Collins is a guy, Jacques Sayes,

they kind of looked at him and said, I coached that guy.

I'm sure he played a role in bringing him to Cleveland

and kind of giving him that career year.

And so Mary Kay, when you talk about Mike Routenberg,

nobody knows Quincy Williams in that building,

better than Mike Routenberg does.

And knows how to use him better than Mike Routenberg does.

So, you know, this is a guy who has, first of all,

this has been a theme with some of these guys they brought in.

He's played.

He hasn't been injured a lot.

He's been on the field a lot.

So that's part of it.

If you have him in Carson's Westinger playing a bunch of snaps at linebacker,

that makes it easier on your defense.

But also, he's going to have a little bit of a chip on his shoulder.

And I think we picked up on that.

Like when he got asked about the jets,

and I know to one of your questions, he kind of stopped you.

Mid-question is like, is this the last question I'm going to get about the jets?

Like, is this it?

Because I think he doesn't want to talk about that anymore.

He wants to move on from that.

Last year, it was not a good year for him with that organization.

So this is a guy that on top of everything else is coming here with just this massive chip on his shoulder.

And after hearing him talk, that's not just speculating.

That's real.

Like he did not like that, he did not like being a part of that organization last year.

That came off pretty easily to pick up,

pretty easy to pick up on that during that Zoom call.

Well, that question also elicited the actual reason why he got

demoted from his starting job last year as he was heading into the Browns game.

And he revealed that he basically got into it with a coach.

And I thought that was pretty interesting.

He said he had never talked to anybody about that before.

He hadn't talked about, he hadn't revealed that.

And so that was a little bit of insight.

He peeled back the curtain a little bit on what went on with him last year.

So I think he was at odds with the coaching staff a little bit.

Maybe it was Steve Wilkes specifically, not really sure about that.

That was his defensive coordinator, former Browns defensive coordinator as well.

And I think that he is going to have a whole lot to prove

after coming off of a year like that.

And he's going to probably be playing with his hair on fire here in Cleveland.

But I do think that when you look back to last year,

he probably was so used to being coached by Mike Routenberg and having his strengths

maximized and being able to do what he did best.

And it just wasn't going his way last year.

And he was frustrated.

He was frustrated probably the whole entire season.

He said, I didn't even play football last year when he looked back to last year.

I didn't even play football last year.

Now that's a strong statement to make considering that he still would have had more than 100 tackles.

Had he not missed four full games with the shoulder injury.

So he would have eclipsed 100 tackles for the fifth straight season.

And that's no easy feat.

But still, in his mind, it was the worst year of his career.

And I think he wants to get that turned around.

Yeah, and we see this a lot in the NFL, like a guy who has been coached in a certain system,

coached a certain way.

A new staff comes in and there's always turnover.

There's always, you know, this guy just doesn't fit here anymore.

This guy doesn't maybe mesh personality wise anymore or play style wise or anything like, you know,

and so the team moves on.

But now he comes to a place where you've got Mike Gutenberg again who knows him so well.

He's the guy calling the defense, making those decisions.

You've got Jason Tarver, who's done a really nice job no matter who they've kind of given him.

And has survived a bunch of regimes here.

Like you've got a good, you've got a good defensive coaching staff.

This is the sort of situation where maybe this becomes actually one of those one man's trash.

There's another man's treasure situations we see all the time in the NFL.

Like one regime is done with the guy.

So he moves on and Tyson Campbell is another example of this in a different way, right?

Jacksonville.

They didn't want him in that that scheme anymore.

Comes here, fits really well in the scheme they're running.

Maybe Quincy Williams can be similar to that, obviously leaving the Jets for different reasons.

Yeah, I mean, I think the Browns have gotten really good at doing that on the defensive side of the

ball over the last three years.

Like really since Jim Schwartz was here and they ran the system because I think

as Jim Schwartz got here, they settled into that defense.

They built out that staff and then obviously that staff gets entirely retained outside of the

coordinator and guys get promotions and shuffle around.

They know what they're looking for now.

So assuming this system is basically staying the same with some tweaks because things change every

year which we have no reason not to assume that at this point.

They have a track record, a proven track record of going out, finding these veterans

and plugging them in and then guys either having career years or at the very least

playing really well and fitting in nicely.

Like they just know what they need on that side of the ball now.

Now the issue for the Browns as the team is now figuring out how to do that on the offensive side

of the football. They haven't been able to master that part but the defense they really have

I think done a nice job of that already.

So let's talk about some of these other guys in Mary K.

We talked to Titus Howard on Monday via Zoom.

You put up a story about what he had to say about the quarterbacks.

This is a guy who he's going to be playing right tackling to tell us that.

But he has blocked for Dishon Watson.

Spent two years blocking for Dishon Watson and did talk a little bit about Shador Sanders has

such a chance to meet him but obviously you know outside of that doesn't know him

all that well but what did you take away from what he had to say about

about what is going to be the overarching story all offseason the quarterback position?

Well I would have to say that I was a little surprised that he talked Shador up so much.

He was very very very positive about Shador.

He actually stated that he thinks he's going to be a great football player in this league.

That's lofty praise. We haven't heard that even from some of Shador's own teammates yet.

Right? Some of his teammates when asked about Shador haven't gone to that extent.

So I thought that was very significant.

I really thought that he was going to have some allegiance, some loyalty to Dishon Watson since

we know their friends. We know that he blocked for him in 2019 and 2020 when Dishon made two

probals and in 2020 he led the NFL with 4823 yards through 33 touchdowns, seven interceptions

and had a 112.4 rating which was second in the NFL only to Aaron Rogers.

So Titus Howard was there for that magnificent performance from Dishon Watson which also

happens to be the last time he started a full season.

So I really thought that that he was going to be all about that and then helping to get him

back to where he needs to be. But no he gave equal billing and equal time to Shador Sanders.

And I think that's smart because these offensive linemen they've got to get behind both of these

guys and do the best that they can to help them shine and to help them bring out the best in each

other so the Browns can get the best quarterback played they possibly can get in 2026.

Yeah and it kind of struck me too while he was when he was talking about that you know

when he mentioned in 2019 they went and they lost to the chiefs and I was like I remember

that game and it feels like I mean it really does when you really stop and think about it you

realize how long ago that was and I you know I just pulled it up here just to get an idea.

So after 2020 which was the season he was referencing Titus Hauer just started 40 games

since then he's played. I'm sure even he has to like have a grasp of just how long ago

that was like man 2020 was forever ago. Now that doesn't mean that he's you know

out on Dishon Watson or anything but Ashley like it he'd certainly and I would imagine all

these guys would did leave that door open for Shador Sanders and you know reference to Jackson

state days and all that kind of following him back then so I just thought it was yeah I think

well just like Mary Kay I thought it was interesting the high praise he had for Shador without

really having gotten to know him yet. Yeah I mean even the Jackson state call back like that's not

the first or second thing that people think of I think anymore when they think of Shador Sanders

like obviously people are going to be most likely to say the Browns or Colorado because that was

his last stop but to me that was this kind of call out that sort of signal like no he actually

didn't know about this guy before he walked in the doors in Berea the last week right so I thought

that was that was interesting to hear from a veteran standpoint I mean I was also just kind of

what stood out to me when he talked and when other guys talked about Titus like the sort of

canvassing or campaigning he was sort of doing behind the scenes I mean I asked him about that

because we got Elton Jenkins talking about that on Friday and I mean he just seems like a guy

who is ready to step in and be one of those veterans even though it's a new team for him I think

he has kind of a cool backstory having you know transition offensive line at a smaller college

that he was originally a tight end he played tight end he played quarterback in high school like

he's one of these interesting guys that just seems like really knows his stuff and was willing

to sort of campaign to try to get something going here in Cleveland with that offensive line

yeah they were all he was doing a little recruiting him in Elton Jenkins or at the senior

bowl together and like yes so that was that was kind of funny too Mary Kay the Titus Howard

you know they made that trade for him what was it the Tuesday before free agency open

so he had like you know almost a full week of lead time there to get out there and

and do some recruiting already to come play for the Cleveland Browns and I guess it worked

he's he got some guys including Elton Jenkins to show up here right and he really did talk a

whole lot about the leadership piece that it's going to take to get all these guys to gel together

it's not easy to put potentially five new starters on an offensive line and have them work in

concert like they need to and he understands and grasps what that's going to take and I think

Elton Jenkins also understands what that is going to take so those two guys will probably

assume the leadership mantle and really try to get everybody in here and do the mentoring that

they need to do you know there will be some other guys that have played some really amazing football

Zion Johnson has some some really good years at guard underneath his belt so he doesn't necessarily

need to be brought along like that but they might have a brand new wiki left tackle and you know

so we don't know exactly how it's going to all play out if they don't have a new left tackle then

it'll be Duwan Jones and he'll still need some guidance because he's still making that transition

to left tackle from his more comfortable and familiar spot at right tackle so it's going to

take a cohesive effort it's going to take camaraderie these guys are going to have to start getting

together outside of football to get to know each other they're going to have to accelerate the

process of jelling and and becoming one and they they've got to do it they have to do it fast

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for by farma i do think that's interesting all this outside of zion johnson um obviously who

who is a little bit younger they did skew older and and the guys that they brought in with with

tightest Howard he's going to be 30 in may out in Jenkins um i'm looking up his age here but he's

obviously you know he turned 30 in December so you know they didn't exactly go super young on that

line now it's america's point actually yeah they might have a 22 year old left tackle but

you know zion johnson is younger this is his second contract so he's only played the four years

but i do think it's interesting that that when they went out to rebuild this line they didn't just go

full youth movement they did decide to go get veteran guys and i think a part of that is probably

like the rest of the team is going to be so young like let's make sure that we have guys who have

played who know what they're doing and and that this part of the team for the most part

is going to be guys that you know we don't have to just teach to be NFL players they know they know

how to do this they they know the the business side of it all of that stuff yeah i mean it just

felt like that was a theme for so much of last year as we got into later in the season when we

talked to Tommy Reese or you talked to some of those offensive position coaches at the time and

like think about how many skill players were rookies or like second-year players or rookies right

like there were so many guys that were young that they were relying on that are still going to be

young i mean quenchon judkins is still going to be young herald fanon is still going to be young

shidor sanders is still going to be young and like shidor sanders needed help with things because

of you know the circumstances and how he was thrown in there you know they had to have their off

was it ethan postic that was calling out the protections and stuff or jolt like somebody

ethan was calling them out like those are things that you need veterans to do you can't just throw

a bunch of rookies online and you know it's funny at the combine when angery was being his typical

anger self and that one of you to give too much away and he got asked you how many rookies would be

too many and he's like well it depends on the rookies right but Todd munkin kind of curtailed

that a little bit it was like well let's not get crazy it seemed like three was maybe the max

cutoff he was willing to put out there um and i mean that would be a lot so it it makes sense to me

that they did this in the way that they did yet nid is jarring when you go and look at this

roster sometimes and and you sort the age on the browns website like how you like herald fanon

and tillin samson are 21 years old uh is they a bond mason gram quenchon they're they're 22 like

there are so many young guys on this team i mean carcin swessinger feels like he's 40 years old

he's only 23 like the guys on this team are so young and having having veterans in that room

it really does it really does matter but i will say american another thing that stood out at

least on friday specifically was you know and of course guys are gonna say this you know they're

not gonna sign with a team and be like man those roster stinks but like it did seem like these

guys were genuinely excited about some of the young talent on this roster and and um i think it

was zion johnson who kind of specifically pointed to seeing quenchon judkins and was like hey i

kind of wouldn't mind blocking for a running back like that so it seems like they're buying in on

kind of the youth movement that's happening with this team that they're about to sign that they

have signed with right and i think another um aspect of the couple of 30 year olds in the uh

o-line room is the fact that you have a very veteran o-line coach in george warhol and you have to

give him some guys that can set the bar and show the way and mentor the other guys every single room

in on any football team has got to have some older veteran mentors there are things that you cannot

learn from a coach you have to learn by watching you have to learn from your peers you have to be

able to go to the guy next to you and say what do i do about this that's how this works so i think

that is one thing to consider there and then dan when you're talking about these guys looking around

the roster and kind of liking what they're seeing um this was something that i i tried to grasp or

ask uh elton jenkins about a little bit was the fact that the cleveland browns beat the green

bay packers last year right i mean you have to be doing something right if you can go out

and beat the packers in a year when there are pretty good football team so a lot of things went wrong

with the cleveland browns last year and most of them had to do with the fact that they were starting

rookie quarterbacks and not first round pick rookie quarterbacks they were starting a third

rounder and a fifth rounder going to be hard to win football games that way but that aside

this roster is a lot better than most people think that it is when you just look at the defense

alone we all know what that's all about and then on the offensive side of the ball yes there's

plenty of room for growth and they still need a lot but it's not completely devoid of talent

it's really not uh again you mentioned herald fan in quinchon uh there are guys on this football

team that you can build around and win with if you're getting that good quarterback play and you're

protecting your quarterback so they could be on to something but of course they have to get the

good cubie play right i mean there's just specific areas where they've got to get better right

offensive line was one of those areas that they need to do improve wide receiver is an area that

they still need to do some work on and some of it they're going to see like okay maybe isae

a bond can develop into something maybe they can save jerry judy's career here i don't

you know we'll see but maybe they'll gamble too much on that stuff and be wrong we'll find out

but they're going to add guys in the draft they're going to add guys who are going to be able to

help them offensively maybe they'll solve quarterback this year maybe they won't but

you know so so we could have look we could be sitting here in november having some of these same

discussions like the defense is awesome again and the offense is still kind of grinded along here

and they still need receivers and you know maybe they still need a couple offensive

something like that but i do think like Ashley if they if they have fixed the offensive line

if they can at least have that consistency of having for the most part five guys out there every

week the same five guys they're they're doing they're playing well they're coached well the scheme

is working if this defense is even 80 85% of what it was last year you should be able to win some

games just because like hey the defense is stopping people and you scored just enough points to win

that's the stuff they weren't even doing last year yeah i mean really the last two years they

haven't been scoring enough points to win and injuries on the line haven't been uh really key

for them so i think that you know we talk so much it comes down to that stuff it comes down to the

takeaway battle can you take care of the footballed can your defense turn it over to give you an extra

chance or two uh in games i think that parts key but i also think you know it's like they can't

there's so many problems and they can't fix everything at once like they have to do this piece by

piece and do it smartly because of their cap situation so i think they're they're off to a good

start in terms of the leeway they've given themselves uh especially with their draft resources

and you you know we'll see how it all plays out but at least on paper which we know the scene

over the last five six years has done a lot of things well on paper that haven't panned out in the

field so that's an important caveat on paper right now they have attacked certain areas of need

up front and they've allowed themselves more flexibility in the draft and taken the panic out of it

all right anything else stand out to you guys do we do we cover everything from these three guys

or was there anything else that kind of stood out listening to those i guess four guys listening

to the four guys we've talked to think paul anca has some thoughts i was gonna say

maybe he's still wound up from the media he's still wound up from the media earlier today we

talked about the media the media i guess like i i did not experience the media i'm i'm in some i'm in

some a county we didn't get the big boom here um i only found out about it because um you know

the group text we're in like i you guys actually i think you were asking like do you guys all hear

that like i didn't and then i got started to get caught up on social media and i saw the videos and

like it was crazy i yeah yeah i um yeah i heard it and i went immediately to my window i'm in

rocky river and i heard it and i went and i looked out the window thinking that a big truck

hit something maybe my house i didn't know and you know one thing after another all the sudden

soon we find out that it had something to do with the media i'm like what what uh so that's a

first i that's never happened to me in my life i have felt earthquakes before i have felt earthquakes

here in little rocky river um but i've never felt i've never heard uh sonic boom and that was

that was bizarre i don't think any of us will really ever forget it if you heard it now

be like no where were you no it's funny because my mom said the same thing married case that she thought

a garbage truck in a house because it was just so loud and distinct so you both had the same

immediate reaction of a truck hitting something i actually know what the heck happened i thought

something hit the house like the roof of the house yeah fortunately it didn't yeah right we

when where did it go like what i feel like we should know where guys i've been doing a lot of

reading on the media today over at cleveland.com and other outlets right and supposedly they think

pieces of it could be in southern medina county yeah i don't know or that yeah southern medina

county but it mostly burned up i mean with the sonic boom okay that was it burning up as it

entered the atmosphere but if you're in southern medina county i don't know check your back yards

well and then and then like there's been bigfoot sightings in portage county like we talked

about the bigfoot sightings for a minute what what's going out bigfoot sightings please

apparently there's been bigfoot sightings in portage county which is like the most surprising

place ever to have supposed bigfoot sightings but yeah real what's going on i don't know

Dan you got to do some investigating you're the closest i know it that well and it's uh for people

that don't know portage county is a interesting place but i don't want to insult at it look if we

are a portage county listener we love you we appreciate you but i'm just saying once you get through

Kent and like pastor avena it gets interesting in portage county so i'm not surprised that we've

seen some big or had some alleged bigfoot sightings out that way there are a lot of wooded areas too

so i don't know maybe i should go look it for bigfoot i think you should go out tonight and see if

you can spot bigfoot i should you could get video you could get video for social i could be like

well that one school suit that random school super antenna new who got the video of the exactly

of the meteor he's going viral today like i could go viral if i get some bigfoot video

what you can so i'll head down somewhere in revenge and start looking for bigfoot

all right well maricades getting a phone call so we're going to wrap things up there on your

Gibraltar podcast um subscribe to youtube clevelandbrowns on cleveland.com all of our socials if you've

got a social media account somewhere anywhere look for orange or brown talk uh click like follow

whatever it is uh and then also get subscribed on apple podcast and spotify just look for orange

or brown talking if that's subscribed but from maricade and ashtray i'm dan thanks for listening

everybody

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