Rookie cornerback Greg Newsome, who turns 21 on Tuesday, already is showing the maturity of a player beyond his years. (Cleveland Browns)
Greg Newsome’s maturity bodes well for training camp battle for Browns starting cornerback spot
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
More takeaways from Browns rookie camp and interviews …
1. Words matter: Cornerback Greg Newsome is the second-youngest of the Browns’ draft picks – he turns 21 on Tuesday – yet his maturity beyond his years has shone in every interview he’s conducted since becoming the team’s top pick in 2021.
It’s also a quality that should help him in his imminent battle with Greedy Williams for the second starting cornerback spot.
An example of this was Newsome’s observations about receiving one-on-one coaching attention at the team’s minicamp over the weekend.
“It is amazing … I will never have this one-on-one coaching ever again pretty much,” Newsome said. “The fact that I am getting [it] right now and before the vets get here is just giving me an edge. When the vets get here, I will at least know what I am doing and will not be a rookie who does not know anything. It is good to get coaching after I make a mistake right away and I can learn from it quickly. I enjoy having that one-on-one coaching, but I know starting next week when the vets start coming back that I am going to have to be able to do it on my own.”
(In a follow-up question about whether he has inside info that some vets will end their boycott of the voluntary workouts, Newsome showed his ability to backpedal, corrected himself and said he didn’t know anything.)
Newsome is an example of why personal interviews are such an important part of a team’s evaluation process. Even if you didn’t break down Newsome’s game video at Northwestern, or know his impressive times and measurements from his pro day, you could spend 15 minutes just talking to him and conclude, “Now, there’s a fella we’d like to have on our team.”
With all the empirical data now available to teams, football is still a people business.
2. The JOK slide: What really caused Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah’s slide from pre-draft projections of middle of the first round to lower-third of the second round, No. 52 overall? He was generally rated by draft experts as the No. 2 linebacker and he wound up being the seventh linebacker chosen.
I don’t think the uncertainty surrounding a possible heart condition contributed as much as JOK’s size (6-1 1/2, 221 pounds) and lack of fit in most NFL defenses.
Honestly, I don’t think JOK even slid. I think he was taken in the right vicinity for a hard-playing, under-sized linebacker who probably isn’t going to be on the field for every down. In other words, the draft experts had him rated higher than NFL teams.
The Browns said they considered him in the first round, but the fact is they were willing to pass him up – probably knowing he was going to last until the 50s.
In any case, Owusu-Koramoah has a very healthy perspective on his draft “fall.”
“I think a lot of things went into play and a lot of possibilities,” he said. “Some teams may have already had picks locked in. Some teams may have not even known how to use me in their system. Some teams may have looked at the heart situation and just went off of that. There are a lot of possibilities when you talk about a team not taking you whether they think something is going on. I believe in those draft rooms there is a lot of second guessing and there is a lot of even third guessing – ‘Oh, I don’t know with this and that,’ – especially in the first round being able to pick somebody for four years or a five-year option and that is something that you really lock in on. The possibilities are out there.”
3. Opting out on opt-outs: Prior to the draft, GM Andrew Berry wouldn’t say whether he would shy from taking a player who opted out of the 2020 college season over concerns about Covid-19. He said evaluating a player who opted out was comparable to a player who missed the season because of injury, and he would consider opt-outs on a “case-by-case” basis.
It turned out that every player Berry selected in the draft did play games in 2020:
Newsome played six games for Northwestern; Owusu-Koramoah, 12, Notre Dame; Anthony Schwartz, 10, Auburn; James Hudson, 10, Cincinnati; Tommy Togiai, six, Ohio State; Tony Fields, nine, West Virginia; Richard LeCounte, six, Georgia; Demetric Felton, six, UCLA.
4. Group of two: What do Hudson and tight end Harrison Bryant have in common? Of a total of 15 players selected by Berry in two Browns drafts, they are the only ones who did not come from a Power Five football program. Hudson’s Cincinnati and Bryant’s Florida Atlantic University do compete in the top-level Football Bowl Subdivision, but their conferences belong to the second tier informally known as the Group of Five.
5. Brownie bits: Reports of Schwartz’s “bad hands” based on a few throws from two undrafted quarterbacks invited to rookie camp are a tad premature … Now that the NFL has widened the jersey number possibilities for position groups, I wish the Browns would preserve the numbers of Hall of Famers such as Leroy Kelly (44), Gene Hickerson (66) and Ozzie Newsome (82), and not randomly give them out. Last year, the Browns discouraged Jedrick Wills from taking No. 73 in deference to Joe Thomas. They should do the same for the players already in the Hall of Fame, no? … At the 2017 NFL Combine, Malik McDowell measured 6-6 ¼ and 295 pounds. Four years later – during which he ran afoul of the law and never played a down in the NFL – McDowell reportedly is closer to 280 pounds and looked more like an end than a tackle, especially wearing jersey No. 58. While a controversial acquisition by Berry, McDowell’s future as a potential defensive end may be another reason the Browns did not draft an edge rusher among their eight picks.
