fans watch short clips from select open practices<\/a> \u2014 mind you, training camp is still about six weeks away \u2014 and react as if they\u2019ve seen everything. <\/p>\nThrough two days of minicamp, two voluntary OTA practices and two more days of rookie minicamp, the Browns are not close to denoting a depth chart. But thanks to forums like X, formerly Twitter, best known as badtakes.com, their fans harbor more June opinions than ever. <\/p>\n
Who is your QB1 through Phase III of the offseason? Before answering, understand that only the best camp plays crack the internet because incompletions earn less engagement. And our view from \u2014 or even the view from a reporter\u2019s camera \u2014 leaves context to be desired. <\/p>\n
The best throw on your timeline could be based on the wrong read. The worst interception might result from misunderstanding. Some drills feature 11 defenders, others feature fewer. <\/p>\n
Six seconds can only convey so much. <\/p>\n
Here is where I should mention that coach Kevin Stefanski insists the Browns pay no mind to internet musings or other outside opinions. \u201cOnce we get inside the building,\u201d Stefanski said, \u201cwe really do focus on where our feet are.\u201d <\/p>\n
And here is where I roll my eyes. <\/p>\n
To be clear: I believe a 43-year-old coach (and self-professed social media holdout) pays the content world no mind. I trust Flacco, who entered the league as Twitter took off, does the same. I even gained faith in late 20-somethings after hearing Pickett\u2019s social take during Wednesday\u2019s media scrum. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame,\u201d Pickett said. \u201cIt should never be considered the real world what you see online. So hopefully nobody buys into that…\u201d<\/p>\n
One hiccup: Many of Pickett\u2019s teammates were born into internet culture. Their phones (like mine) are often glued to their hands. If your \u201creal world\u201d has always included artificial apps, the difference blurs. And from this perspective, our silly camp clips can cause harm. <\/p>\n
With less context and more opinions than ever, June is the worst time for a football player to scroll his phone. As Flacco said Wednesday, badtakes.com has become a big news source. But its message board roots still dot our feed. To the untrained eye, trolls and trained professionals count the same under comment section. And this is quite a burden to bear for a young Browns mini camper. <\/p>\n
Of course, we can help them by searching for context in camp videos (count those passing drill defenders). Players could help themselves by ignoring their mentions. Social platforms could police themselves better, to put it mildly. <\/p>\n
But Flacco can solve each problem with his outdated internet strategy. Put simply: If you must dance, put the phone down. Reality, unlike the For You page, might issue a pleasant surprise. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been on Instagram. That\u2019s the only thing I\u2019ve ever logged in on in my life,\u201d Flacco said. \u201cI won\u2019t download the other things because I don\u2019t miss them. Like, I, like, yeah, if you told me you\u2019re taking Instagram away, like, I\u2019ve been on it. I\u2019m too far down the road. But, like, Twitter and all those other things, I won\u2019t even download it on my phone just because I know it\u2019s a trap to just, you know, get sucked in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Football Insider newsletter free trial: Take a minute and sign up for a free trial<\/a> of our Football Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive content from cleveland.com’s Browns reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEREA, Ohio \u2014 Browns quarterback Joe Flacco will joke, trade stories and pose for pictures with his younger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,29284,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-123674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-cleveland-browns-veterans-minicamp-2025","12":"tag-clevelandbrowns","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114669689682873691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}