Shedeur Sanders' star power is undeniable. But it wasn't enough to garner an invitation to the Browns to host 'Hard Knocks: Training Camp.'
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is an analyst of the Cleveland Browns for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.
Takeaways from NFL tidbits ...
Not receiving a single prime-time game on the 2025 schedule is on the Browns. They didn’t deserve one.
Not receiving an invite to host “Hard Knocks: Training Camp” is on the NFL. They blew it by snubbing the Browns.
Commissioner Roger Goodell announced on Wednesday that the Buffalo Bills will be the featured team on the 24th season of “Hard Knocks: Training Camp.”
It will be the Bills’ first appearance. The Bills are an elite team on the field, but they are as boring a story as you will find in the NFL. What’s the storyline? Josh Allen poking pins in a Patrick Mahomes voodoo doll? Bills Mafia smashing folding tables in the parking lot of the team’s St. John Fisher University training camp headquarters in Rochester, NY?
The Browns have so much more to offer in drama – the QB competition, the Haslams’ PR stadium battle with the city and county, Myles Garrett’s decision to drop his trade demand after the acquisition of Kenny Pickett (hah, hah), and, of course, Shedeur Sanders.
Sanders was the No. 1 story on each of the three days of the draft. And even after his precipitous draft fall to the fifth round, Sanders promptly sold more jerseys than any other draft pick. Like the Kardashians, Sanders is a social media phenomenon. He is famous for being famous.
The Browns were one of the four AFC North teams featured in last season’s “Hard Knocks: In Season.” A league source confirmed that appearance did not exempt the Browns from appearing on “Hard Knocks: Training Camp.”
The Browns did have the option to decline an invitation, however, because it appeared on “Hard Knocks: Training Camp” in 2018 – within the eight-year exemption period prescribed in league rules.
A team source confirmed, however, the Browns were not invited and did not have to decline.
The NFL schedule-makers can’t be criticized for not including the Browns on the prime-time schedule in the regular season. But why one of the Browns’ three preseason games weren’t given prime-time treatment is hard to figure. Sanders might start in any of those three games.
I grudgingly watch “Hard Knocks: Training Camp” every summer. There hasn’t been a good series since the Browns’ appearance in 2018, Baker Mayfield’s rookie year. The Hue Jackson and Todd Haley scenes were priceless.
R.I.P., Jimmy Irsay
The Indianapolis Colts owner passed away in his sleep on Wednesday. He was 65.
The son of Robert Irsay, a league pariah for moving the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1983, “under the cover of darkness,” was earnest in his effort to re-establish the dignity of the franchise in Indianapolis.
Irsay was blessed to have Peyton Manning and then Andrew Luck as franchise quarterbacks for essentially a two-decade run starting in 1998. Manning turned Indiana from a basketball state to a football state, and that spurred a remarkable transformation of Indianapolis into a sports destination city.
Irsay was quirky and battled addiction and mental health issues. But his heart was always in the right place. He was a philanthropist in his community and well-liked.
My lasting image of Irsay was formed during the aftermath of Art Modell’s move of the Browns to Baltimore in 1996.
The league and the entire sporting world was rocked by what had happened. Nobody knew at the time if Cleveland ever would have an NFL team again. Cleveland without the Browns was not something anyone ever imagined.
At the first league meeting after Modell’s brazen move, I cornered Irsay and asked for his reaction. He began talking about what a tragedy it was, and within 30 seconds he was crying profusely. He was one of the few owners who authentically felt the pain Cleveland was feeling at the time.
I always respected him for that.
Tush push lives
The Browns were one of 10 teams that helped to defeat the Green Bay Packers’ effort to abolish the “tush push” play perfected by the Philadelphia Eagles. The vote of 22-10 to abolish the play came up two votes shy.
So the “tush push” – on which members of the offensive team literally push the quarterback from behind to convert a short-yardage situation – will survive in the 2025 season. I think the momentum gained to abolish it may result in voting it down next year.
The vote caused me to revisit the topic with Browns coach Kevin Stefanski at the NFL annual meeting.
“The quarterback sneak is the most effective play,” Stefanski said. “It’s 1 yard to go. Whether you push or not, I think that’s part of our game that’s never going away. We had Jacoby [Brissett] a couple years, he was outstanding on sneaks. He didn’t want to be pushed. He said get everybody away from me.
“So I think there’s elements when you do have those pushes in there. You're not allowing the quarterback to pick the ball up and sneak over to the C gap to the right, sneak over to the C gap to the left. So if you do that, you're kind of saying, we're going one way. You have played now as teams try to sell out and stop that play. You have perimeter plays that have come off of that. You've seen that over the course of time.
“So to eliminate a quarterback sneak from getting pushed, I don't know that it's something that needs to be legislated out of the game. The injury [factor] is not there for it. So I would be in favor of keeping the rules as they are.”
Stefanski went on to say that new offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren was interested in creating his own version of the “tush push.”
“We've run a lot of quarterback sneaks over the year,” Stefanski said. “We've done it [with] Jacoby, [with tight end] Harrison Bryant. So the quarterback sneak is something that we believe in. Whether we push or not, doesn't change the mechanics a lot.
“But Coach Bloom, if you're around an offensive line coach that loves to sneak and wedge and come off the ball, coach Bloom understands the job. He understands what's entailed there. I think he's excited about coaching the technique and then we'll see how we get out from these meetings. So what's allowed and what's not.”