Head Coach Todd Monken (8.19.26)
Can you run us through the events of the end of practice yesterday and what your thinking was there?
“I mean, first of all, I love the way our guys practice. Since I’ve been here, and I say it all the time, it doesn’t matter where, if you want to go practice in the parking lot, they’ll go practice out there. And I love our defense, but there comes a time where Browns have to take care of Browns. And that’s part of it. We’ve got to be able to practice together collectively and take care of each other. It wasn’t malicious. No one’s trying to get another player hurt. That’s just part of it, and I thought we’d had enough.”
Do you think the defense targeted Quinshon Judkins?
“No, I don’t think so.”
Not to hurt him…
“No, I don’t get the feel that’s it, you’d have to ask those guys. I got the feeling that Adin (Huntington) had done a great job of getting off a block, and it was to the side there, and you’re kind of in a decision, ‘Do you tap off, we can’t tackle him,’ and I just think he made a split-second decision to play physical. We just have to be careful, because that’s going to knock Q into other players, and you’re going to get friendly fire, which is usually when you get hurt. The running back usually there doesn’t get hurt. It’s somebody when you roll into their legs.”
The other thing is, it was Mike Hall (Jr.)’s first practice in a long time, and he looked fired up from the start of the practice.
“He had a great practice. It was fun having him back out there. We played him at some end, which he can certainly disrupt on the end. His energy is contagious, and his explosiveness is contagious for the rest of the defense.”
Do you find yourself in your first training camp as a head coach toeing the line of how much physicality you want? You’ve got over a dozen guys out for the last week.
“Yes.”
No coaches seem to know the answer.
“You don’t. You really don’t, because all I can say is we really haven’t lost anybody for an extensive amount of time. I think there’s a certain amount of callousing that has to take place. You don’t play as many games. Like I said yesterday, you used to play a quarter and a half. You used to play at least a full game and a quarter in the preseason games, which you don’t do anymore. So where are you going to gain that? I do think the guys have more time than ever at night. You only get them for 11 hours. I’m not going back, we’re dating ourselves a little bit, but back when you used to have a little bit longer practices and longer meeting times and all of that, I don’t know what that sweet spot is, because during camp, whether you practice two hours or an hour and a half, whether you’re here for 10 hours or 12 hours, you’re tired. Your body’s going to feel it. So how do you push through it? That’s to be determined. You go with your gut, at what you believe in and what your team needs.”
How much of it is that you only have one chance to make a first impression? This is your first impression.
“Yeah.”
Does that go into it, too?
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought Bruce Arians said it, I took it from him. He got his first job at 60, which is really cool. You get to do it however the hell you want to do it. And this could easily be my last job. When you get it at 40, you’re concerned about your next job. I’m not worried about the next job. I’m worried about doing it the way I want to do it, and I’m going to do it the way I want to do it.”
Just to finish, first impression, if you start off soft-
“Oh, I get what you’re getting at. Yes, some of that is true. It’s hard to speed up, right? That is exactly right, I 100 percent agree with you. It is much easier to tell people to slow down. I was told that at a young age, you’re going too fast. It’s like yesterday, I would rather have to pull our guys off than say, ‘Let’s practice physical, let’s practice our rear ends off.’ You’re exactly right. You’d rather pull back. That’s what we do. We set the schedule, and then if we need to pull back, we pull back. If guys need some reps off, we do that. I understand now what you were saying.”
What is your messaging going to be to the team with the Bills coming in, in terms of being able to impose their will a little bit, but not crossing that line?
“Well, it’s a measuring stick. You talk about consistency, the Bills, since Sean (McDermott) got there, consistency in terms of winning, being in the playoffs, competing for a Super Bowl. So, it’s kind of where we’re at. I think, individually and then collectively. I think the players would look at it as an opportunity to see where they’re at individually, whereas coaches, we look at, okay, where are we individually and then collectively as a team, schematically, what we’re doing, and all of that gives you a chance to build confidence as you move forward and also evaluate the roster, because you’re really going against yourself. So, you get a chance to go against somebody else. Just like the Bears preseason game, you get to evaluate where you’re at. I know I’m excited, our guys are excited. It’s the one opportunity we get. We didn’t have another to practice with other teams.”
We saw what happened with Dallas and the Saints this past week. How do you protect against that happening?
“I have no idea, because everybody says the exact same thing. To think that (Brian) Schottenheimer and Kellen Moore, or whoever was practicing together, that they didn’t tell their teams absolutely no fighting. I mean, they know each other. Absolutely, we’re going to say the exact same things, that it’s silly to do it, and threaten whatever it is, and you’re competitive. I don’t know, we’re going to say the exact same things. You’re going to get kicked out if you fight or if you weren’t going to play, you’re going to play, or if you were going to play, you’re not going to play. Hell, I don’t know. In that moment, when you get hijacked, it happens, and you don’t want it to happen, and that’s why you’ve gone to one practice, and hopefully our guys understand that, we understand that. I’m not saying that’s what I want, that’s not what I’m saying. We’re going to do everything within our power to not put ourselves at risk. But I don’t have the answer. The players are the ones that have to have the answer. They’re the ones that are out there doing it. They’re the ones that, in that moment, have to make that decision.”
Do you expect your starting offensive line to all be able to go tomorrow?
“I’m hopeful.”
It’s not anything too concerning with either (Elgton) Jenkins or Tytus Howard?
“No.”
With that, you’ve had so much injury on the offensive line throughout camp. How can you gauge where the running game is?
“You can still gauge it, and we’re not where we want to be. You can say that. Is that part of that? Yes. And we’ve only played one preseason game. But I can see in practice we have work to do. There’s a lot of things we have work to do, our systems, our players aren’t there yet. Still a work in progress. I’ll say that I’m being super concerned, or overly concerned, until we play our first game.”
Jared (Verse) and Shedeur (Sanders) have both said over the last week that they’ve done more work here than they’re used to, with the Rams in the preseason and in practice, but that’s because we as a team have more work to do. Shedeur today was talking about earning it before you get those days off. When you hear that from your players, what does it tell you about how they’re digesting your philosophy?
“I only know what I know, and the way Sean does it works for Sean. He’s had unbelievable success, either by his philosophy of how you practice or systems. I only know what I know, and I know we’ve got a young team that needs to work and needs to develop, and our quarterbacks need to work. I think the more mature your team is, and the older you are, there are certain times you do have to pull back. But in your first year, with a young team, trying to get as close as you can to being ready to start fast out of the gates, I like where we’re at.”
Will there be much one-on-one work tomorrow?
“The only one-on-ones will be O-line, D-line. There will not be wide receiver, DB, or gunners vice. That won’t happen.”
Do you value team reps, whether it’s 7-on-7 or 11-on-11, more than the one-on-ones? Even in your own stuff?
“You value the team more. I think the one-on-one stuff is great, it’s also where you get the most scuffles, I guess is the best way to put it. So, you try to minimize that a little bit, but you just have to have a quick whistle. O-line, D-line, have a quick whistle.”
In Baltimore, your offense was near the bottom of the NFL in 11 personnel usage in two of the last three years. Was that more philosophically based on what you think is important, or more rooted in who you had on your offense?
“It’s really who we had, when we had Isaiah Likely, Mark Andrews, Patrick Ricard and Charlie Kolar. Last year Mark got a new contract, Isaiah got a lucrative contract, Charlie Kolar got eight million dollars for a blocking tight end, and that ought to tell you those guys were pretty good players, let alone Patrick Ricard’s a damn lineman back there. So, we just had those guys, and Derrick Henry was a part of that, and putting those guys on the field was more advantageous than maybe having a third receiver. The other thing is, with Mark and Isaiah, when you go a little bit more QB-driven, those guys are really good at blocking the perimeter, which allows you to get away with that a little bit. And they’re great receivers. It didn’t make any sense. But again, depending on where we’ll be at with our skill players, we’ll determine that, and who we have.”
Do you have any behind-the-scenes stories about when Freddie (Kitchens) took the Browns to the Colts’ training camp?
“Oh yeah, that was crazy. The first practice was great, but Freddie was fired up. He was absolutely fired up about the way the practice went. Freddie was fired up after practice. He got after our guys, like, ‘hey, we’re not going to be anybody’s so and so.’ So, when we got to the practice field, Dave Borgonzi is our linebackers coach, and I’d worked with him at Tampa, and I said, ‘hey man, careful, man, this is going to be like Slap Shot, they’re going to drop the gloves, and it’s going to be like, oh my God, what just happened?’ And I think it started in special teams, for all those of you that were there.
I think it was (Jarvis) Landry.
I don’t even know, I wasn’t even involved in special teams. It felt like it was like Major League Baseball, where the pitchers came from the outfield and the dugouts to be involved in it. I didn’t even see what happened.
It was pre-meditated.
I’m not going to go that far; I appreciate you saying that. I’ll just say that certainly, I agreed with Freddie in some regard, that you don’t ever want to take a back seat to anybody. He was right in the fact that our calling card, and Freddie as a man believes in toughness, and I agree with that, that’s what I loved about Freddie. He believed in toughness, and in his mind, we weren’t tough enough the day before. So that I agreed with.”
Do you envision splitting reps pretty evenly between the starting quarterbacks?
“Yes. It’s hard to be, everybody uses the word even, or equal, or fair. The reality is each block’s a little bit different, run downs, pass downs, pass skelly and red zone. So, they’re each going to get five and five with the ones, and they’re all going to get it. But what plays they get; I really don’t have time to look at exactly what the plays are. You’ve got to be able to go do it. But I’m excited to see them play.”
Todd, with the quarterbacks balancing the play clock, how do you try to help them slow that down so they’re not getting ahead of themselves or rushing things?
“Are you taking about in the pocket or operational?”
Operational and in the pocket.
“There’s a lot to both of those. The operation piece, we have to do a great job of shrinking the verbiage for the calls we get in, getting it in quickly, getting our players in and out of the huddle, getting to the line of scrimmage, trying to eliminate anxiety. It’s not like a game to get ready for that, because you think you’re ready, but then you’re up against it, and that’s part of it. It’s why we do perfect operation about every other day, we’ll do it again today, trying to become perfect at everything that says coaching, which is your operation. And then the time clock of when to get rid of the ball for each player is different. Guys that want to extend plays and want to make plays, and believe in their ability to make plays, are going to hold it longer, be it Lamar (Jackson), be it Ben Roethlisberger, be it Shedeur (Sanders), because they are elite playmakers. You’ve seen it. Now, where that sweet spot is, I don’t know, and the only way to get better at it is to have the consequences of it. You don’t feel it out here nearly as much as a game, right? You get out there, and it’s like, all right, shoot, got to get rid of the ball, we just took a sack, it took us out of a drive. So that’s what being able to play and have those consequences, turnovers, holding the ball too long, you’ve got to have that offset. With Lamar, the benefit outweighs the wrapping on the number of times he ends up taking a sack, because he makes so many plays. Ben Roethlisberger was the same way. I believe Shedeur has that in him.”
Todd, do you think seven-on-seven periods create bad habits for quarterbacks?
“There’s some of that. I think it has its purpose, seven-on-seven, which is getting a ton of reps at your pass concepts, especially your drop-back, because in your normal team periods, you’re really working play-action, screens and movement. So, it has a purpose, and it’s set up so that at that moment, your O-line and D-line get separate work. So, there is multi-purpose involved, but it can. It can allow you to hold the ball a little bit longer than you’d want. It serves a multi-purpose, not always for the quarterback, but really just the totality of your offensive team and your defense, so they can play routes defensively as well, work their pattern-matches. But it can. Certainly can.”
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