The disappointing and delightful part of Browns’ cuts
By STEVE KING
Somewhere, the late, great Eddie Johnson is shaking his head in disgust.
“Been there, done that, man,” he is saying.
And at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where he serves as director of athletics, Darry Sims has a smile as wide as his wingspan.
That’s the situation — both disappointing and delightful — as the Browns made their “final” roster cuts late Tuesday afternoon — or at least the cuts so they could get down to the NFL regular-season roster limit of 53. More end-of-the-roster changes are coming. You can bet on it.
The disappointing part is that the Browns waived wide receiver KhaDarel Hodge. I was hoping that they saw his value. He’s not a high-profile guy, never has been and never will be, but he just makes plays, over and over and over again. Isn’t that what a football player is supposed to do?
The Browns will apparently try to re-sign him at a much lower and salary cap-friendly figure if he clears waivers. Let’s hope that happens. You need good players, especially when team expectations are as high as they are for the Browns this season.
Remember Eddie Johnson, the linebacker who played 10 seasons for the Browns? He was undersized and extremely hard-hitting, but in being a seventh-round draft choice in the 1981 NFL Draft out of a basketball school in Louisville, he always had to fight like crazy to make the team. The Browns kept drafting players, signing players and trading for players who were supposedly much better than him, but every year when the dust cleared coming out of the preseason, Johnson still had not just a job, but a key role on the defense.
Now for the fantastic part. It’s that defensive tackle Malik McDowell, the longest of longshots, made the team. His is the greatest story of camp. He was an early second-round draft choice of the Seattle Seahawks in 2017 out of Michigan State, where he was a beast, but, in large part because of off-the-field issues, including a bad ATV accident and getting tossed into jail, he has never blossomed. He came to the Browns with seemingly little chance of making the team, but nobody ever bothered to look at his heart and desire.
Sims was a first-round draft choice of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1985 but flamed out. The Browns took a flier on him and he ended up playing two seasons, 1987 and ’88, with them.
You just never know how these things will go.
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