BEREA ― The eruption point came after yet another pre-snap penalty. That’s what set Browns coach Todd Monken off at the end of practice on Aug. 10.
Monken punctuated it by throwing his radio toward a nearby wall. After a relatively short talk to the team, he then sent them back to the locker room to proceed on with the rest of their day.
A day later, Monken understood the cause of the build-up. While the symptom may have been the penalties, the cause wasn’t the players.
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“Well, unfortunately we send them back with their head coach being emotionally hijacked, which isn’t a good thing,” Monken said before the Browns’ 12th training camp practice Aug. 11. “And I told him that this morning that can’t happen. I should have just gone to a different cadence. Let’s let us play out the drill. I was obviously frustrated. So again, we’re never too old to learn, right? Keep processing, getting better. And so that’s one thing we sent him home with.”
To set the scene, the Browns were closing out practice with the Nos. 1 and 2 offenses facing a one-minute, end-of-half scenario where they have to go down and score. Instead of moving down the field, they found themselves in both occasions moving backwards due to multiple false-start penalties.
One of the defining traits of Monken has a coach is his honesty. It’s a brutal honesty, in fact, that is tough to conceal.
However, Monken also couldn’t conceal the root of the problem that led him to lose his cool to cap practice. It’s why he made it clear to the offensive players the next day what happened.
“I told them that in that moment, what I should have done and what I didn’t do,” Monken said. “And I’ve said to them and us, I mean, we’re human. I got fired up. I was p*****. And that was awful. That was s***** football. And that is going to get me fired up. And I have to own some of that.”
The subject of pre-snap performance has long been something Monken has emphasized. He’s talked about or been asked about cadences on a nearly daily basis, especially within the context of quarterbacks Deshaun Watson and Shedeur Sanders.
This time around, at the end of a relatively sloppy practice indoors, the blame didn’t just fall on the quarterback. Where there was one finger was pointed outward, there were multiple fingers pointing right back inward at Monken in this instance.
“Obviously, we haven’t coached it well enough,” Monken said. “There were other aspects about the two minute that got me fired up that obviously was a reflection of coaching. I mean, those things, we’re getting plenty of effort. You guys are fighting the rear ends of, we’re tough. So we got that. OK. Well, how are we going to do the little things well? And that’s coaching. That’s me and that’s our staff.”
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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: Todd Monken said he got ’emotionally hijacked’ by Browns practice penalties
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal | USA TODAY Network
