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<\/p>\nBEREA, Ohio \u2014 Todd Monken has five months before his first game as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. <\/p>\n
However, two traits have been apparent since he was introduced on Feb. 3.<\/p>\n
Monken tries to keep his message and goals simple.<\/p>\n
When asked what his message was as the Browns began their offseason workout program, Monken said on Wednesday, \u201cWe\u2019re in the development business and the winning business. Point blank, period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reigning AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett was among the players not in attendance. However, he typically doesn\u2019t show up until late in OTAs or the mandatory minicamp.<\/p>\n
Monken and his staff have plenty to accomplish over the next two months. Most notably, they must determine who has the edge at quarterback heading into training camp.<\/p>\n
Shedeur Sanders, Deshaun Watson and Dillon Gabriel are in attendance for the first week of the voluntary workouts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken speaks with reporters at the NFL football annual meetings, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Phoenix. Credit: AP\/Ross D. Franklin<\/p>\n
Sanders started last season\u2019s final seven games, going 3-4 with seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions.<\/p>\n
Watson has gone 9-10 as Cleveland\u2019s starter with 19 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and an 80.7 passer rating. He has not played since Week 7 of the 2024 season after tearing his Achilles tendon twice.<\/p>\n
Gabriel started six games, going 1-5 with seven touchdowns and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s enough there to really like Deshaun and the way he plays. There\u2019s enough there to really like the way Shedeur played at the back end of the year. And there\u2019s enough early in the year from Dillon that is playing the position at a very high level,\u201d Monken said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s going to have to start off first, and someone\u2019s going to go second, and someone\u2019s going to go third. Then we\u2019ll be willing to switch that. That\u2019s easily, on a daily basis, what we see, just like any position, that\u2019s not set in stone.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to getting up to speed on the playbook, Monken said the important thing in the first two weeks is for players to work on their individual techniques before honing in on the scheme.<\/p>\n
Monken also has to deal with the perception that the Browns are a dysfunctional organization that cannot get simple things right. This flared up again at last week\u2019s league meetings when Monken missed the coach\u2019s photo because he was getting a haircut during it.<\/p>\n
Monken is the seventh coach hired by Dee and Jimmy Haslam since they bought the franchise in 2012. The Browns have a 73-139-1 regular-season record since 2013, the second-worst mark in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Cleveland has just four winning seasons since returning to the NFL in 1999.<\/p>\n
Monken said he did not care about the criticism and claimed the meeting was moved up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas it disappointing? You bet your (butt) it was disappointing. Waited my whole life to be a head coach, and I\u2019m not in the head coaches\u2019 picture? You think with AI, they could have done that quickly and got me in there? But no, it\u2019s the way it is,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat changes everything? Winning changes everything. I told the coaches that the other day, right? That\u2019s what we have to do. It\u2019s real simple.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEREA, Ohio \u2014 Todd Monken has five months before his first game as head coach of the Cleveland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,2337,7,6,2309],"class_list":{"0":"post-861560","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-clevelandbrowns","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116371136120023992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861560","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=861560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}