The questions about where Austin Barber would play came almost immediately after the Browns traded back into the third round of the NFL draft to select the Florida offensive lineman.
Browns coach Todd Monken said the night Barber was selected with the No. 86 overall pick that the plan was for him to start out at tackle, which is where he played for the Gators. However, he didn’t talk for long before also saying a move to guard could happen for the 6-foot-6⅞, 318-pound lineman.
Monken and offensive line coach George Warhop are just in the infant stages of getting to work with Barber, with the Browns’ rookie minicamp starting May 8. However, Rob Sale spent the last four years as Barber’s position coach at the University of Florida.
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For Sale, the question of guard vs. tackle for his former protégé is something he never had to consider. He arrived in Gainesville with then-new head coach Billy Napier in 2022, when Barber was a redshirt freshman, and almost immediately found a way to get him on the field at tackle.
“It’d be hard to say,” Sale, now in his first year as the offensive line coach under Napier at James Madison University, told the Beacon Journal in a phone interview. “It’s a tough question. He can play all positions. I never had to play him at guard, so I cannot put my stamp on that. Sure, I think he can play guard, but he was a long … It’s hard to find tackles in college football, and it’s hard to find [them] in the National Football League, that could play on that edge. The value for us, he obviously played at a high level at tackle, right? Played his redshirt freshman year at tackle.”
Barber played in 13 games, with five starts at right tackle, as a redshirt freshman in 2022. The next year, Sale and Napier flipped him to the left side, which is where he started the final 34 games of his Gators career, save for three games missed in 2023 because of ankle and left shoulder injuries.
That said, Sale acknowledged the possibility of a move to guard definitely makes sense for Barber. A big reason for that is his size, and he points to a former Browns Pro Bowl guard as the example.
“But Wyatt Teller and all those guys, they’re long guards who can run,” Sale said. “And that’s what Austin is. He’s a long tackle who’s probably 320, whatever his weight is now, and he can run. He’s really athletic. So I can see him playing guard. To me, it makes sense.
“But he’s a guy also two years from now, there’s a draft and they go draft a guard, he’s a guy that can bump out to tackle. You can get pinched, your starting tackle goes down, he can bump outside because he has film, he has evidence of playing tackle at the highest and the best conference of college football in the SEC. So I can see him playing guard. It makes sense.”
Barber was also a basketball player during his high school career at Trinity Christian in Jacksonville, Fla. He also played quarterback and linebacker as a youth before switching to the offensive line when he first moved up to Yulee High School in Jacksonville, where he played his freshman and sophomore seasons.
That athleticism is something Barber will certainly need to maintain whether he’s at tackle or guard. However, Sale acknowledged there’s still room for him to grow, specifically in terms of bulking up, which would help Barber with his ability to be versatile for the Browns.
There’s also going to be a certain developmental curve that’s added on, assuming the Browns do shift Barber to that position.
“Him going to guard, there’ll be a new set of things to learn at that position because he hasn’t done it,” Sale said. “So there’ll be a new set of issues and things he has to fix and learn when playing on that position. I do think sometimes it is easier to play guard than it is tackle because you’re not out there on the edge. You got sideboards.
“Austin’s a smart guy. He could go from a right tackle to left tackle within a game. So learning the playbook will not be an issue for him.”
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Sale knows that first hand. Although he wasn’t there the first year Barber was at Florida, he was there the second semester of his true freshman season, almost immediately after the season concluded.
So Sale watched Barber progress through the development curve, going from true freshman to redshirt freshman reserve to, finally, a redshirt freshman starter. Then he watched over the next three year as Barber went from redshirt freshman to a senior third-team All-SEC performer.
“After spring and during the summer, we have player evals about what you need to get better at,” Sale said. “Here are your strengths, here are your weaknesses, here are the drills that we’re going to do to improve that. He was always looking for feedback. He was always watching guys in the National Football League that play really well at their position to see what it looks like, guys that get paid millions of dollars, right? So he was very open to criticism of how to attack the work, where he needs to get better. …
“You can coach Austin hard, but you got to love him just as hard. But, no, he did a good job in that standpoint every year getting better and better and better.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ. Sign up for Browns Insider newsletter at https://profile.beaconjournal.com/newsletters/browns-insider/
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Tackle or guard? Austin Barber’s former coach at Florida says, ‘Yes’
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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