The Cleveland Brown’s patch-work on the defense continues as they sign free agent Malcolm Smith on Sunday.
Malcolm Smith is getting another shot in the league with the Cleveland Browns. The former free agent is now on his fourth team in four years. Poor play and injuries have hamstrung the former Seattle Seahawks SuperBowl MVP, which is why he’s available. Don’t let the award get in your way of seeing Smith for who he is. He’s nothing more than a backup at this point in his career and at in his best years was an average player. Now he’s older, slower, and less likely to actually make a difference today.
Smith was officially signed by the Browns on Sunday and it capped off a week of hemming and hawing around the direction of the team’s defense after Mack Wilson got injured. The team needed another linebacker even before Wilson got injured, but it’s now the team finally moves. Instead of getting a top free agent or making a big move to shore up the center of this defense, the team again goes for a bargain basement deal.
Which is odd. If you look at the offseason the Browns spent money, but most of it went to the offense. Jack Conklin and Austin Hooper came in with mega deals. Yet, the Browns put in patchwork type effort for the defense. Signing several bargain-basement deals with guys who were never starters or bad ones on their previous teams.
Guys like Karl Joseph are young, injury-prone, and had a tendency to miss assignments. B.J. Goodson was a Green Bay Packer, the only team more hungry for good linebackers than the Browns and he couldn’t catch on there. Guys like Andrew Sendejo, who was one a Pro Bowl-caliber talent but now in his early 30’s and struggling to stay healthy, doesn’t bring inspire much confidence in the team.
Besides the Myles Garrett extension, no move the Browns made in free agency made anyone really feel like they tried to get better. The team is hoping hard that the draft picks are better than their draft positions and are ready faster than usual, otherwise, this defense is going to struggle. Smith isn’t the answer but there are five linebackers the team can still bring on fair deals who can offer something to the team.
Jake Ryan
Jake Ryan is a good football player. Across his time with the Green Bay Packers, Ryan showed himself to be a great run stopper. A departure and trip to Jacksonville were meant to show what Ryan could do but injuries slowed Ryan’s 2019 season. He barely played and was not brought back. Ryan then signed with the Baltimore Ravens and was released due to a non-football injury. A free agent once again, there’s still no word on what the injury was or how severe it was and that may be why teams aren’t calling him.
Yet, unless it’s a torn ligament in his knee or something else that’s catastrophic, why not give him a call? Again, if he’s too hurt to play in 2020, fair enough. The Browns were right to not call him then or were right to not offer him a deal if they did talk.
If Ryan is healthy or would be healthy for the season, then why there aren’t even rumors that the Browns aren’t interested in signing him is baffling. They’re clearing fine with taking riders on injured players, like Karl Joseph, Olivier Vernon, Odell Beckham Jr., and Malcolm Smith among others. So the injuries aren’t a huge concern.
It’s also not like Smith is a better player than Ryan when healthy either. Ryan is a pretty good tackler, and while he doesn’t have the athleticism as a Joe Schobert, Ryan can be a wrecking ball in the middle of the defense. Not one to blow a lot of tackles, Ryan would be an instant upgrade over much of what the team currently has. Smith has a Superbowl MVP but so does Joe Flacco and Dexter Jackson. It’s not actually anything to be impressed by.
Why the NFL does a Super Bowl MVP and not a Playoffs MVP is anyone’s guess.
Clay Matthews III
Clay Matthews III is going to be on every list we can muster until he retires and then even a few years beyond that. Matthews is still a good football player, having eight sacks at age 33 for the Los Angeles Rams, but beyond that, he’s Cleveland royalty. While you couldn’t fault the Browns for going with Alex Mack in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft, everyone wanted the Browns to take Matthews that year instead.
The team needed him then, and they need him still 11 years later. The Browns could’ve taken Matthews and gotten Max Unger in the second round instead of wasting a pick on Brian Robiskie. Matthews became an All-Pro in Green Bay and no doubt would’ve seen the same success in Cleveland. So now that the team is desperate for help at linebacker because again, look at who they just signed, why are they not going after Matthews?
He’s older than Malcolm Smith, yes, but he’s also better than Smith. Not just historically, today, Matthews is better than Smith at any point in Smith’s career. He’s also more durable than Smith and a better playmaker than Smith. B.J. Goodson or Sione Takitaki can play in the middle if that’s the worry. After all, Smith’s an OLB himself. He’s an OLB who isn’t good against the pass and isn’t known for his pass-rushing skills.
The more that’s written about Smith and Matthews the angrier this selection is becoming. Unless Matthews laughed the Browns off the phonecall, there was no reason to bring in Smith and not Matthews for a workout. Matthews is the better player in every facet of the game. Even at 34.
Manti Te’o
If you’re signing free agents like Malcolm Smith, you’ve set the bar pretty low. Smith and Manti Te’o are roughly in the same category of player, except that Te’o is younger and a better tackler. Sure, Te’o hasn’t had the best pro career, injuries have slowed him considerably but considering the Browns need dynamic playmakers and Te’o can still do some of that when he’s healthy, it makes sense to give him a shot.
After all, you’re giving Smith a shot. So why not? It’s not like Smith is one of the greatest linebackers of all time. He’s not even one of the three best linebackers from the Seahawks team he won a title with. He’s played 104 games but started only half of them. Te’o at least is a persistent starting-caliber linebacker.
Te’o brings a pedigree to the team that’s needed as well as a leadership that is clearly absent on this defense. The team is gambling hard that former leaders guys like Joe Schobert and Christian Kirksey are easily replaced, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least yet. Bringing in a guy like Te’o who nearly lead the Fighting Irish to an undefeated season from a linebacking position would help bring some structure to a defense that lacks, well, a lot.
Sure, Te’o’s translation to the pro game hasn’t been as prolific but he learned to lead at one of the toughest schools in the country and that leadership, unlike natural gifts, doesn’t just go away. With so many young players, and guys fighting for new contracts and bigger roles, someone’s got to step up and be a leader and the last guy to try that nearly ended Nick Chubb’s season and blew his leg out.
That guy was Mack Wilson, the person who’s injury caused the Smith signing.
So yeah, Te’o has a lot to offer a team. Even if he just has another injury-plagued season, it’s still better than having to wonder why the team gave a backup another chance.
Mark Barron
Why hasn’t the Cleveland Browns called about Mark Barron? Only twice in Barron’s career has he not had 80 tackles in a season. He’s as reliable as players come. He’s a fine tackler, with a good nose for making plays. He has nine career interceptions and 12 career sacks. Not bad considering he’s never at one place on the field for more than a season it seems.
Part of Barron’s intrigue is his dynamic ability to play anywhere on the defense it seems. Safety, corner, outside and inside linebacker. It doesn’t matter. He’s played five different positions on the teams he’s played on and has done well at all of them. Sure, as a top 10 pick, you hope for accolades, awards, and records, things Barron has none of, but what he has done is been a steady player at every position the defense needs him at.
Putting Barron on the field with Olivier Vernon will help the team be more dynamic across the board. Barron and Vernon have history at other positions and that type of dynamic can really help make Joe Woods three-safety-dime package work. Why remove a linebacker from the field when he can just move like a Transformer from one position to another with a snap of the fingers?
Barron may not be the John Lynch or Ronnie Lott of modern safeties, but as far as a free agent goes, he’s good enough to help plug some gaps as they come up. If the training camp for the Cleveland Browns has proven anything it’s that gaps will come up throughout the year.
Alec Ogletree
If you’re looking at free agents, why not look at the top of the heap? Alec Ogletree has had some chippy injuries over the course of his career but nothing significant to make you think that at 28-years-old he couldn’t come in as a better option than Malcolm Smith. The longtime Ram in both St. Louis and Los Angeles, Ogletree spent the last two seasons as a member of the New York football Giants.
An All-Pro player, Ogletree has shown to be one of the most consistent players in the NFL still and with the Browns going into the 2020 season with the most half-baked defense the team has seen in some time, guys like Ogletree should be pursued.
The team’s defense so far in training camp has not been making the best headlines. While yes, it’s still just preseason and it’s still too early to say this team isn’t going to do well but at a certain point there comes a time for worry. The Cleveland Browns defensive “upgrades” were not met with the highest of praise in the first place. A lot of the safeties brought in were done so on one-year deals and had a history of injuries. The defensive line was poor last year, even when Myles Garrett was playing, and the team actually made zero moves to improve it.
The linebackers were maybe the worst ones yet, as the team is just defaulting to also-rans and young talent already on the roster. It might all work, sure, but it might also be the biggest, telegraphed, dumpster-fire in the history of the team.
If the defense gets gutted early and often, the fans will remember that the team chooses to pass on guys like Ogletree for really no real reason.