With the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars kicking off Friday night, fans can finally get excited about seeing football back on their screens since the Browns season ended in January. While preseason football is rarely beautiful, it is football and that is something to celebrate.
It is also a positive, from a fan’s enjoyment perspective, that Jacksonville will be playing QB Trevor Lawrence and other starters while Cleveland is planning to play QB Deshaun Watson and a majority of their starters.
Earlier this week, the Browns released their unofficial depth chart. It is important to note that these are mostly meaningless this early in the season but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a look and break them down:
Starting with the offense, there are no real surprises with everything being what was expected primarily. WR David Bell being the team’s third or fourth receiver as a rookie says just how strongly they think of him.
On defense, the team went with co-starters between Jacob Phillips and Anthony Walker Jr. Walker just returned to practice which gave Phillips a chance to show off that he was healthy and in great shape. There may be times that those two are joined on the field by Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah to create a speedy linebacker group.
At cornerback, it is interesting to see the team’s top draft pick, Martin Emerson Jr., listed ahead of A.J. Green who has been lauded throughout training camp. John Johnson III continues to be listed at free safety and Grant Delpit at strong but the versatile players have shown the ability to mix at match their roles.
Unfortunately, the depth chart came out before the Jakeem Grant injury so we have no information on who might return kicks now that Grant is on the injured reserve.
