CLEVELAND — Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield has no shortage of options when it comes to sharing the football, as the front office made it a priority during the last two offseasons to get as much talent around the signal-caller as possible.
But with several playmaking wide receivers, including Odell Beckham Jr., Jarvis Landry and Antonio Callaway, a power rusher in Nick Chubb, versatile backs in Duke Johnson Jr. and Kareem Hunt, and athletic tight end David Njoku, there could be conflict with players wanting more touches. However, the Browns are not worried about that, not with Mayfield and Landry helping to lead the way for the offense.
“They’re a lot of great players, and that’s all they are right now is great players,” Browns coach Freddie Kitchens told Jim Donovan in a “Let’s Be Clear” interview during rookie minicamp this past weekend.
“I think each one of them, to a man, has never won a championship, and if we can get everybody to buy into the fact that they all together can accomplish more than anyone, two is one and one is none, and if we can get them to buy into that, we will have something, but not until then. We’ll be a bunch of good individual players and we’ll see how it goes. They’ve got to buy in. We’ve got it on the thing where you pull through the parking lot: ‘Out of yourself and into the team,’ and if we can do that collectively, we’ll be fine.”
During the final eight games of the 2018 regular season, the Browns seemingly had fun playing the game, often celebrating touchdowns as a team, sharing in each other’s successes and reveling in the victories, of which there were five over the final eight weeks of the year.
“Ask Jarvis Landry,” Kitchens said. “His stats went down in the second half of the season, and I promise you he was happier than he was in the first half of the season.
“That’s the type of players we want, and if they’re not like that, we’re not going to get where we want to go. There’s only one way, and that’s the way to do it. I’ve been around it, so I know what it looks like, and I know there’s no ‘worried about myself’ so much as worrying about the team and we’ll get there.”
To Kitchens, the 2018 Browns reminded him of something his former coach at the University of Alabama, Gene Stallings, said to him when he was a quarterback for the Crimson Tide.
“Coach Stallings used to tell me, ‘the fun is in the winning,’” Kitchens recalled.
“We were winning, and that’s why we were having fun and we believed we could win, but no two teams are the same. So when this team comes back to finish up this spring and comes back for training camp, we’re not going to pick up where we left off. It’s a ‘start over’ type thing, and if we start over and do it the right way and do it collectively, together, then we’ll get back to that point again and not until then.”