Head Coach Todd Monken (11.9.26)
Todd (Monken), just wondering, now that you’ve had time to digest the game and sleep on everything, are you ready to say who will start at quarterback for you on Sunday?
“I am not.”
Okay. And what is your kind of thinking behind not saying anything right now?
“I really haven’t thought through it other than getting through this morning’s tape. We just got done meeting with the guys. They’ll flush the game, and then we’ll have a chance to meet offensively more extensively a little bit later today. Just, we went through the tape immediately, had to break go with personnel. Then the team comes in, and we haven’t had a chance to circle back as an offensive staff.”
Okay. And I mean, so at this point, there’s still a chance that it could go either way, then, you could possibly start…
“I think I’ve answered the question.”
Todd, do you believe a player can lose their starting job because of injury?
“Oh, I don’t. I mean, it’s week-to-week. A player doesn’t lose or win a job…I don’t know what that means. Each week we put the best players on the field that give us a chance to win.”
And, you know, when you kind of went back and kind of evaluated Shedeur’s (Sanders) game yesterday, just what were your big takeaways in terms of maybe, you know, when you were able to dive into the film, that really stood out, that you were really pleased with?
“Well, I’m awfully proud of him. It’s been 10 weeks, since he had reps with the ones. I think it showed up, the reps that we gave him in camp. But that’s not like, over the last couple of months, I thought he battled. I thought he showed composure in the pocket, getting to his check downs at times. He made plays with his feet and escaping. He made the scramble play to Jerry (Jeudy). He made a couple other…he made a big third down conversion early, and he made one right there in four-minute, right for the holding call that gave us a first down. So that’s what you wanted to see. I thought our operation for the most part was clean. We had a couple times, but we didn’t have a delay game. We didn’t have to use timeouts. I thought our guys took that to heart. So, there was a lot there to like, certainly a lot to clean up. And that would be expected from a player that hasn’t really, had three days with the ones, and I thought there was a lot to build on.”
Hey, Todd. With the game planning that goes on Tuesday, do you feel like you need to have that decision by tomorrow morning?
“No. I mean, I don’t see it that way. Do I think it’ll be then? No. I just said we hadn’t really circled back as an offensive staff.”
Okay. And then on that two-pointer at the end there, did you think there was a chance for Shedeur to throw the ball quickly before he needed to scramble?
“No. Our routes got disrupted. They did a good job with their corners of disrupting us at the line of scrimmage. We didn’t get to the spots we needed to get to, so could’ve even sat in there a little bit, of course, but we got disrupted, and that threw us off a little bit.”
And then, you know, you talked after the game how the choice was tie or lose if you kick the extra point, because there’s only a minute left. When you guys had the ball, you let the clock kind of drain. Was that part of it just to shorten the game, or why did you like, take that time before the two-minute warning and those kind of things?
“Well, when I took it before the two-minute warning, I wanted to process in my own mind. It was a third down, if I remember right. I thought it was going into a third down, and I wanted to think that bought me some extra time to think about what I wanted here as a third down call. Because we certainly needed a touchdown, right? I mean, we needed a touchdown there, and I was trying to make sure that I got us in the best third down call in my mind that we could. And we did end up converting. So that’s where it got to that, that it really wasn’t that I was trying to drain the time. I was just trying, without taking the timeout, I was trying to process what call I wanted to get to. But once we got to where it was down to a minute, the way they have the overtime rules now with 10 minutes, at that moment in my mind, we were not going to get the ball back, and we were either going to tie or we were going to lose. And the way the new kickoff rules are, I don’t think people take that into consideration. Like, the ball could end up on the 35 or the 40-yard line with a kick, or the 30-yard line. And with the kickers nowadays that can make 60 yarders, shoot, you got to go 25 yards to kick a field goal to win the game. And at that moment, I like the play that we had. We didn’t execute it to go and win the game.”
Yeah, Coach, just I know you don’t want to name a starter, you’re not ready to name a starter, but did Shedeur’s performance yesterday alter your perception and thoughts on his development and potential playing time at some point this season?
“Well, that’s a great question. I wouldn’t say it altered it. There’s a really good question, Daryl (Ruiter). Like, it didn’t alter it. I was thrilled. I was happy for him. Every player wants to go and play and play well. And there were moments I didn’t coach well enough and he didn’t play well enough, but there were moments at the end of the game where he made plays, right? He got it in the players’ hands, did a really good job. He was in command. So, I was really pleased for him, and I was hopeful he played well. I thought he had a great week of practice, and there is no guarantee that that will carry over. So, I’m really happy for him. And does it give me confidence from what I saw in the fall? Sure it does. You bet it does, Daryl. It gives me more and more confidence at what I saw in the fall, that there’s something to build on for sure.”
And then I wanted to ask you about running back miscommunication. Two instances. There was one you were really frustrated after a play. Not sure if that’s not what you wanted on a certain play or it didn’t go the direction you wanted. And then specifically, the goal line, where it looked like Shedeur got briefly tangled up with Austin Barber there, and it seemed to throw that whole play off a little bit. I guess my question is, it feels like there’s been some miscommunication or whatever timing between quarterback and running back this season, regardless of who the quarterback has been. So just how can you guys clean that up? So, in those critical moments you don’t have those small mistakes that can ultimately derail a play or a series or a drive.
“Well, that’s again between the penalties and our detailed execution, our mental stamina play-to-play is below the line, and it’s been Browns hurting Browns. And we have survived in games by not turning it over and our guys playing their rear ends off and competing at a high, high level and finding a way at the end to make plays. Where we’ve been falling below the line is when it comes to elite detail, communication and Browns hurting Browns. And that’s been, from a penalty standpoint, that’s been from an execution standpoint, and that’s all the above. And we’re going to fight like hell to fix it, and it hasn’t been good enough. Am I happy with how our guys play? Their effort, their physicality, their connection? Of course. Their ability to fight for each other and continue down after down? Yes. But till our discipline and our mental stamina increases, we’re going to be hurting ourselves, and that makes it very difficult to stack plays and stack drives, and at times on defense, and then it’s harder to get off the field.”
A couple of questions. Todd, first off, for the record, is Deshaun (Watson) completely healthy?
“Yeah, I think so. Saw him today. Looked healthy.”
So, no concussion leftovers or anything?
“No, I don’t think so. I did the old method, Jeff (Schudel). I said, ‘how many fingers do I have up?’ And he said, ‘two.’ I said, ‘fine, you’re cleared.’ That’s a joke. It’s a joke, Jeff. He’s out of concussion protocol. He’s good.”
Okay. Then the point Daryl referred to, before that, it looked like (Quinshon) Judkins did something wrong, and that’s why Shedeur had a scramble. And then after that segment, Shedeur went over and talked to Judkins on the bench. Did something happen on that play that Shedeur had a scramble and that wasn’t the plan?
“Yeah, I would just say that we – on that play, we didn’t coach it well enough, and we didn’t execute well enough. It’s always a ‘we’ thing, but I would say we had no intention of Shedeur running a tight zone play on third and two or three by himself. But we got to do a better job coaching. We got to do a better job of executing.”
Hey, Todd, I mean, I know you already mentioned the Browns hurting Browns thing, and I mean, I know how much you’ve been preaching that to these guys. So, I mean, just to have another game where there’s double-digit penalties, like, what else can you guys do at this point to try to shore some of that stuff up? Especially, as you watch the film with those penalties, in particular, the early ones, especially yesterday.
“You are what your tape says you are. So as much as I preach it, as much as I believe in eliminating, blank football, you are what your tape shows. And we had six penalties in the first quarter. We’re number one in the NFL in penalties, but we’re like 20th in yards. And what does that tell you? Tells you that it’s all – a number of it’s pre-snap. A lot of it is undisciplined, and it starts with me as the head coach. And it’s not one phase. It’s offense, it’s defense, it’s special teams. We had three of them on special teams, and a number of it is our top guys. So, it’s not like it’s, ‘oh, this is an outlier’, but collectively as a team it’s not good enough, and it falls directly on me, and we’re going to fight like hell to get it fixed, because it’s not sustainable. You know, the lost-yardage plays, the sacks, the penalties, the Browns hurting Browns is what’s stopping us from really taking a giant step.”
And then in the fourth quarter, when it goes from fourth-and-seven to fourth-and-two, I mean, I know it’s earlier in the fourth quarter at that point, and I was just wondering about, like, what’s your process and the decision making process to go for it in that situation, and what can you share about what went wrong on that incompletion?
“Well, I thought we’d get it. I thought it was a great opportunity when we did a different snap count to get us to fourth-and-two, the whole point is to go for it. Otherwise, you might as well punt it from where you’re at. So, we did it to get us to within reasonable, and we didn’t execute the play. We. And that’s all of us collectively, we didn’t execute the play and didn’t give us a chance, and that’s what happens. But from the 40-yard line, I think it was about the 40-yard line, fourth-and-two, chances are I’m going to go for that every time.”
Hey, Todd. Yesterday Dylan (Sampson) outpaced Quinshon in snaps for the game. Just, I guess, what kind of necessitated the heavier usage from him over Quinshon in the game, ultimately?
“Well, the game went that way. You know, when you end up, really, we tried to keep it balanced early on, and when you’re not in rundowns, we were in get back on track a decent amount. We were in third downs a decent amount. At the end of the game, we were in two-minute to win it, really even when we got the ball back in overtime, you eventually got to where you wanted to throw it to have as much time, and that’s going to put Dylan in the game, because he’s our third down back. It probably lend itself more that way. By the way the game went. We did have a number of plays, and we did have scenarios. We wanted Dylan in there.
But the more you stay on track, the more you’re going to see 10, and the more you’re not and you’re in two minute, the more you’re going to see 22.”
I know there’s no moral victories inside a locker room, but it certainly felt like spirits were still pretty high yesterday from the locker room. Guys are optimistic about what’s to come and the opportunity that you’re still in. Just how valuable is that for this young team that they’ve been able to… I know you lost back-to-back games for the first time, but you generally are pretty good about flushing that and just kind of moving on and staying positive.
“Well, for sure. I think we’ve got a really resilient group. Guys that like to play, like to play with each other and for each other. So that makes it easy for them to come back to work. Like I told them, I said this was not easy to play six of your first nine games on the road. I had Peter (John-Baptiste) look it up, that’s only happened two other times in the NFL. Do I think it’ll harden us? I do. In terms of what? And we come out of it five and four now before the season, would I have said, man, I’m jacked if we’re five and four. Yeah, well, it doesn’t feel that way when you’re five and two. I said it to Andrew Berry. I said, it’s like saying, ‘When you’re 30, man, would you take living to 78 and have a great life?’ And probably a 30- or 35-year-old say, ‘You bet.’ I don’t say that s— when I’m 60, I want to live until I’m 85 or 90, and that’s what we did. We don’t like it where we’re at. Once we got to five and two, but we’ve earned being five and four. We’re right there in the mix. I do believe our best football is ahead of us, and I wanted our guys to know that we made it through a pretty damn hard grind of having six of your first nine on the road. We’re three and zero at home. Guess what? We have the next four at home and a bye week. It’s all right there in front of us. It really is.”
I know a couple times last night and today, you just mentioned how proud you were for the strides that Shedeur has taken, the improvements, and mentioned that work ethic that you’ve seen from him in order to get that. I’m just wondering, personally, what you have seen, what has gone into those improvements, what he’s done to get to those strides that you have noticed from the summer to even just nine weeks into the season while he’s been QB2.
“Well, I said that even all the way back in the spring where you could see the improvement, which led to the competition in fall camp and made it to where it was a tough decision. He came a long way. That’s a real credit to him and Mike Bajakian and Matt Baker and our offensive staff. And Shedeur likes playing football. He likes the game. He’s a confident player. He’s confident in his ability. He’s gotten better at communicating what he sees, what he likes. Communicating with the players. The message that he carries to the other players, that when you start sounding like a coach, that’s a starting point as a quarterback. Are you carrying the message and we’re all on the same page? And he does. He’s come a long way in that regard. And you talk about operation, what a great job he did during the game. I’m really happy for him. I’m disappointed we lost. I mean, there’s no way I’m sitting here saying a loss. But doesn’t every player want to play and give themselves a chance to play well? And I’m happy for him, and we’ll see where it goes from here.”
You talk about player development and improvement. Another guy we’ve asked you about before, but Myles Harden, just what have you seen from him from the first time that you got to work with him to now, after having two sacks yesterday, and just kind of feeling like he’s starting to come into his own and figure things out a lot more than earlier on?
“First of all, he’s another one that loves to play football and always has a smile on his face. You can tell the players love him, like as a guy they want to be around, knows he brings it every day, competes, great disposition, like he’s fun to be around. And we’ve got a lot of those guys. He’s not the only one. We’ve got a lot of those guys, it’s fun to come into work every day and work with. And it kills him when he doesn’t play well. He’s got that in him. He’s got that mentality of, like, ‘I’m going to get it right,’ and that’s what you want. And we got a lot of those guys.”
Todd, I jumped on right at 2 and noticed you went at 1:57 or 1:58 again, so sorry if this was asked earlier, but the way the league is going in overtime now, the teams that get the ball first have gone on to long drives and have taken five, six minutes off the clock. So, does it change your mode of thinking now where you want to get the ball first instead of deferring? I mean, I know you deferred yesterday-
“So, Joe (Reedy), that’s a great question. You only get one, so you can’t piggyback off of that. Okay, but understand this, that with the limited amount of time, the advantage of taking it first is if you think you’re going to get it again, right? That if you believe you’re going to get it again, then the advantage falls there. If you’re not sure of that, then the advantage falls on the ‘you get it second’ because you get to see what you need, right? What is necessary in the game. So, you’re right. And really, it balances out. I think the numbers basically come out about even, that the teams that take it first and the teams that take it second. So, it’s basically at that point, it’s dealer’s choice. What do you feel like? Like, where are you at? Where do you feel like you are throughout the game? Is it a low scoring game? You feel good about your defense? Do you feel good about your offense taking it? In that moment, I wanted to make sure I knew what we needed. And the way it turned out, it turned out that way. We knew exactly what we needed. And when we scored with a minute left, we went for two and didn’t get it. And it doesn’t always play out that way. It didn’t play out that we won, but the scenario played out the way that I wanted it to. And it was just like on the fourth and two, when we went with the extra cadence to get it from fourth and seven to fourth and two, it played out exactly the way I’d hoped. We just didn’t get it on fourth and two, and that’s all you can do with the scenarios, is hope it plays out the way you wanted it to and then you got to scheme it better, you got to coach it better and give yourself a chance there at the end.”
I know you dropped Harold Fannin a ball. I mean, anybody who watched the run against the Titans and even yesterday, looks like Marion Motley, and he gets the ball. He had that one target that got taken away with a penalty. Is there anything, was he just have to stand and block? Or did they take him out of the game to not get the ball until overtime?
“Well, some of it was that way. Early in the first drive we had a play targeted for him, and we didn’t end up going his direction, and we should have. And there’s others where, yeah, we needed him to chip some. We used a single receiver, we used Denzel (Boston) to chip. We used out of one by three sets, we felt Chase Young, deservedly so, as a game wrecker. How are we going to stop him from getting to our quarterback? And does it limit your spacing a little bit? Of course. And so, Harold was a part of that, and we just didn’t find a way to get him involved early. Even in four minute we had a screen that they kind of sniffed out, that we didn’t want
completion, because we needed to take a sack there. That was a situation where we needed the clock to run. So, it just happened, and we weren’t really in two minute a lot, like in the Titans game, we were in two minute before halftime and at the end of the game, which lends itself to more targets. But we certainly know Harold is a weapon, and we need to get him involved earlier in the game.”
How impressed were you with Carson’s (Schwesinger) game? Especially because I don’t think he was really pleased with how he played in Pittsburgh, to come back and have that game yesterday.
“Well, he’s a great football player, and if you do this enough and you’re self-aware and you have expectations of your play, you’re going to be disappointed when you don’t play up to a standard you’ve set for yourself. But if you do this enough, you’re going to have tough games. I mean, you’re going against the best in the world. You’re going to have games where you play… and to me, Carson’s played about as steady as you’re going to get at such a high level. And every now and then you’re going to have one of those where you feel like, I didn’t feel that way, he felt that way. It just says a lot about him. And we have a number of guys that are like that. He happens to be one of them. I say that because we do. Where they have a high expectation of their play and they’re disappointed when it doesn’t go that way and at times the opponent has something to do with that. The flow of the game has to do with it. But his ability to get around the football, chase the football, his instincts to punch the ball out, to make game changing plays is who he is. And so, it’s been fun not only to watch, but see him continue to develop.”
It appears that at the beginning of the games and even sometimes through three quarters, the offense is pretty sluggish. Then in the fourth quarter, you all are very, very prolific. Is there something that could be done where you can light that fire at the beginning of the game? Because it just seems like in the fourth quarter, if the offense plays like they played the last quarter, seems like it would just be unstoppable. So, what is it that you can do as a coach to enable the team to get off to a better start? Thank you.
“Oh, my goodness. Way to get me going, Delvis (Valentine) in one of the last questions of the day. We certainly have to start faster, and we’ve been our own worst enemy, whether it’s been penalties or we’ve had a turnover or lost yardage plays. But certainly, it’s not a recipe for success to start the way we have, whether we’ve deferred or whether we’ve taken the ball. So, we’re fighting like hell. We’re looking at what we’re calling. We’re looking at what… Obviously in the fourth quarter, it’s a little bit different because we’re throwing it a ton and we’re getting it to those playmakers and so, you’ve got to look at that. What are our play calls, how are we scheming it, what are we doing early in the game? But certainly, it’s been on both sides. It’s been offensively and defensively at times, our inability to start the game off fast. And certainly, we’re going to fight like hell to fix it.”
Hey, Todd, just want to kind of go back on the decision to make Deshaun a healthy scratch inactive. Just given the fact that he is a 10-year vet. He didn’t return to practice Thursday and was around you guys in the meeting rooms. Why wouldn’t you at least make him the emergency quarterback, if the worst-case scenario, you had to go to that?
“Well, he hadn’t really taken any of the reps, and I know we did that with Tytus (Howard) the week before, but I think it’s different with a right tackle. That’s my opinion, in that he got no throw with our skill. The only thing he would have gotten was off to the side and the only time he could have taken team reps would have been Saturday. And you’re playing on the road. Going to be loud. The high priority was on operation, which I think Shedeur did an elite job of. We kind of made that decision. He wasn’t even on the field for the first three days of practice. So, it was like we just ultimately made that decision and to maybe keep Deshaun out of the fray, you know, should he go in? Is he really completely cleared? He was cleared. But the bottom line was, didn’t practice, quarterback had been through concussion, and we just felt like the best thing was at that moment, without all the reps, to go with Dillon (Gabriel) as our backup.”
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