No unit in the league was more emphatically overhauled than Cleveland\u2019s offensive line. Five of the six leading snap-getters from last season are no longer with the team, and three of them (Bitonio, Teller, and Pocic) were multiyear starters. It\u2019s tough to measure just how poorly that interior trio played, as the carousel at both tackle spots hamstrung the entire unit. But the Browns were 31st in adjusted line yards (according to FTN Fantasy), 20th in pass block win rate, 24th in run block win rate, and 32nd in quick pressure rate surrendered. It was comfortably a poor unit.<\/p>\n
Out with the old, in with the new. The Browns could potentially field a starting offensive line made entirely of players they\u2019ve acquired in the 2026 league year. Howard, acquired from the Texans via trade, figures to start at right tackle. First-round pick Fano will man the left side. Jenkins, cut by the Packers, has played better at guard than at center in his career, but with the big free agent signing of Johnson, Jenkins looks like he\u2019ll stick at center with Cleveland. The other guard spot comes down to incumbent Teven Jenkins and Barber, a third-round rookie who played tackle in college but is likely to convert to guard in the league.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t one individual move here that blows me away as a clear upgrade. We\u2019ve seen worryingly poor play from Jenkins, Howard and Johnson in recent stretches — that\u2019s why they were available. But collectively, the infusion of new blood makes it likelier the Browns hit big on at least one acquisition. Say Fano is a lights-out rookie tackle, or Johnson sees the light bulb turn on in a new ZIP code. Just two plus starters would move the needle considerably from last season to this season.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of jelling to do in the new group — and just one injury could reshuffle the whole deck. But given how poor the Browns\u2019 line was last season, an average group in 2026 would easily qualify for the most improved positional groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No unit in the league was more emphatically overhauled than Cleveland\u2019s offensive line. Five of the six leading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,1864,2337,7,6],"class_list":["post-905615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-browns","tag-browns","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-cleveland-browns-news","tag-clevelandbrowns","tag-football","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116665638195220868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905615","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=905615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}