BEREA — Joel Bitonio said he doesn’t believe the Cleveland Browns were, by talent, a 3-14 football team in 2024. There were even moments when they showed they weren’t that football team, he said.
The reality of the fact is that the Browns absolutely were a 3-14 football team in 2024. The reason for that, Bitonio said, is something that has been identified.
The question, however, is if it’s something the Browns can correct to prevent 2025 from going in a similar direction.
“It’s all toughness,” Bitonio said on June 2. “It starts at training camp and just having that ability to go to battle. And when things do not go [well], it’s a long season, you’re going to lose some games, but how do you bounce back? How do you not let one loss turn into two?”
How does that happen? It starts in the offseason.
The problem with the offseason is that, when it comes to on-the-field work, it’s limited in what can actually be done in only helmets and shorts. That doesn’t mean the opportunities are not there.
“It’s in the lifts, it’s in the conditioning, it’s creating competition,” right tackle Jack Conklin told the Beacon Journal on June 11. “I think that’s where you create that toughness now is creating that competition within the team, and within that, you start creating that accountability and all that. Once you have accountability of your teammates, that kind of fits into that toughness mold where you can [find] that guy to keep going hard at the end of the game.”
There’s the usual saying that talk is cheap. When it comes to toughness, especially in the NFL, it means even less than that.
It certainly doesn’t start with what’s said into microphones and recorders in June. That’s why Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said acknowledging the problem was simple, but the next step is the one that will determine whether or not that toughness takes hold.
“I think the easy part is to talk about it,” Stefanski said. “That’s the easy part. You can do it. I think the hard part is making sure that we have players, coaches, we’re putting them through a program that is callousing up our bodies, our minds. So, the work is hard, but the easy part would be to talk about it.”
Putting those words into action starts with Stefanski and his coaches. It’s a multi-pronged action plan, however, that involves both on- and off-the-field aspects.
It’s starts with a change in the approach to training camp, which in the past has not been nearly as physical as some other camps around the NFL. It’s not about going back to the pre-2011 days of the real two-a-days and three-hour OTAs, but at least bringing a level a physicality that creates those callouses to which Stefanski was referring.
“Ain’t no doubt about it,” running backs coach Duce Staley, whose 10-year playing career included stops in Philadelphia for Andy Reid and in Pittsburgh for Mike Tomlin, said about the new practice approach. “I mean, we got blitz pickup, every day hopefully, fingers crossed.”
The on-field aspect also includes the offensive identity the Browns are trying to, in some ways, return to with Stefanski and new offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. It’s an identity that centers around the wide-zone run game that both Bitonio and Conklin said they favored after former offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey was fired.
The off-field aspect starts with enforcing something that had been part of a mantra the Browns have used for years — accountability — even if there often have been times when there was little evidence of that taking place. If there is any chance of changing the mental toughness from what it was during 2024’s disaster, that accountability has to be something that is more than a word printed on a T-shirt.
“We just want to hold our guys as coaches, holding ourselves, holding our players, players holding their peers a hundred percent accountable,” Rees said. “Not letting details slip through the cracks, not letting things fall by the wayside — a lot of that’s mental toughness. So when you talk about callousing the team and having that toughness, a lot of it’s just mentally making sure that we’re all up to the standard at which we want to hold ourselves to, players and coaches.”
Coaches like Stefanskki and Rees can talk about it all they want. It’s when players like Bitonio and defensive end Myles Garrett are not just talking the talk, but also setting the tone by walking the walk, that it has the best chance to take hold in the locker room.
The disappointment and frustration of that 3-14 season led Garrett to go public in February with a demand to be traded to a contender. He and the Browns quelled that in March with a four-year, $160 million contract extension.
That extension has led to multiple Browns executives and coaches, from owner Jimmy Haslam to defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, to speak to Garrett about assuming even more of a leadership role. The All-Pro edge rusher knows it’s players, especially like him, that will make the toughness part take hold.
“I think the intensity and the urgency just has to take another level, take another level up rather,” Garrett said. “And I can’t expect someone else to do it on any other side of the ball or any other position room. You’ve got to be the leader in the entire team, and that’s what’s been laid out for me. Like you said, Jimmy said it, Kevin said it, and I’ll take the reins and I’ll be that guy.”
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
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: ‘It’s all toughness’: Browns say path back from 3-14 disaster starts with mindset
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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