quietly pushed that void date back<\/a>. I speculated at the time that it could give the team flexibility to spread his dead cap hit over two seasons if he eventually decided to retire. If you recall, he considered retirement last offseason, before giving it a go. Had he known the offense would be as bad as it would be, and that the head coach would be fire midseason, he probably would have called it quits.<\/p>\nDespite that, the Browns have actually made it clear that they\u2019d like him to return. Here is what head coach Todd Monken said recently about Bitonio:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came up to the office a few weeks ago and we tried to talk him into it right then. I mean, but he was not in that position yet to say he wanted to come back. I\u2019m for really good football players, and I\u2019m for really good football players that are wired like Joel. There aren\u2019t many wired like Joel. Like what he says, how he carries himself, how he prepares.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, you had GM Andrew Berry talking about Bitonio at the Combine. Berry indicated that Bitonio has earned the right to take his time to make a decision, whether that be retirement or returning to play. It\u2019s a vastly different tone than the team took last year, when similar questions would arise on if they wanted to bring Nick Chubb back. There is a genuine interest in retaining Bitonio.<\/p>\n
If Bitonio decides to return, I think it makes sense to re-sign him on something like a 1-year, $14 million deal. However, I could truly see this going one of several ways. He could mull retirement again, and if he\u2019s still not quite ready to hang it up, returning to the Browns, rather than starting over with a new organization and moving, can make sense on the right deal. I think he\u2019d also like to entertain free agency, though, and could be interested in a select number of teams \u2014 like the 49ers or Patriots \u2014 to try a contending team for one year before hanging it up.<\/p>\n
Let us know in the comments below whether you think the Browns should re-sign Joel Bitonio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How and When They Joined the Browns Bitonio was a second-round pick by the Browns back in 2014,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,3295,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-785986","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-free-agency","12":"tag-clevelandbrowns","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116157906459547528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785986","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=785986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}