CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
Back in the early days of websites and the internet, a time with which I was intimately familiar, many website owners would put up graphics declaring their sites “Under Construction” when they launched a site early. I remember them: Animated GIFs of a construction worker digging, or a barrier with “MEN AT WORK” written on it in capital letters. We’ve moved far beyond those times, as brand websites display elegance, while news websites display many ads and financial desperation. I can detect the latter because I’ve spent 25 years trying to keep an Internet sports media business financially upright while the Internet sets itself on fire every five years.
In this, I feel a kinship with Andrew Berry and Todd Monken, who are constantly in what Monken calls the “development business”, incorporating new talent each May and attempting to bring it up to speed while rebuilding the rest of the mechanism over the Summer.
Monken is leaning on some of his college background here, which makes sense, given that his first Cleveland roster still looks like it has a meal plan. Per the Beacon Journal, there are only 18 players on the 90-man roster with more than five NFL seasons, plus seven more with exactly five years. Ten of those 25 arrived this offseason. That is not a roster. That is a giant 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with shoulder pads.
The most useful thing from the Browns’ second week of OTAs may not be who lined up where, although we will all dutifully squint at that because we are damaged people. The useful thing is that Todd Monken has made the organizing principle pretty clear: this roster is young, it is being rebuilt in real time, and the Browns are going to treat practice reps like Buffalo Bills fans treat canned goods before a lake-effect storm.
So Monken is two-spotting, stretching sessions to the limit, and trying to manufacture reps inside the NFL’s offseason rules. “You’re used to having a bigger roster in college,” he said, “obviously it’s shrunk now, so you’re used to going two-spot, trying to find more reps, more walk-throughs.”
That stuff is not sexy. It is not going to get aggregated by somebody with three fire emojis and a fake depth chart. But it matters, especially when Spencer Fano is being groomed to protect the blind side, Denzel Boston and KC Concepcion are being asked to grow up fast, and half the fan base is already refreshing OTA clips and peering at them like they’re fuzzy black-and-white printouts of ultrasounds.
While Monken tries to develop the youth and knit together functional offensive, defensive, and special teams units from the parts he’s been bequeathed, Andrew Berry continues to re-arrange those parts, fine-tuning his roster.
The Browns made a small roster move Tuesday, signing cornerback Tyron Herring and waiving cornerback DeCarlos Nicholson with an injury designation.
Herring is 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, officially in his first NFL season out of Delaware. He originally signed with Green Bay as an undrafted free agent in 2025, spent time on the Patriots and Packers practice squads, and will wear No. 47 in Cleveland. Nicholson, meanwhile, had signed with the Browns after going undrafted out of USC this year.
This is the sort of move that usually lives in the transaction wire and nowhere else, but it does tie into a bigger OBR theme this week: the Browns are making a curious bet at cornerback depth behind Denzel Ward and Tyson Campbell. Maybe the new staff has a clear plan. Maybe they like the youngsters on the depth chart. Maybe they are going to keep churning until somebody sticks.
All three can be true, which is annoying but usually how roster building works.
The other defensive name floating around is edge rusher Janarius Robinson, who reportedly worked out for the Browns. Robinson is 27, a former Vikings fourth-round pick out of Florida State, and spent last season with the Raiders, where he had 10 tackles and 1.5 sacks in 10 appearances. He also worked out for New England earlier this month.
The Browns’ interest in defensive-line depth is not exactly breaking news, but it is sensible. Myles Garrett does superhero things. The rest of the edges still have to survive August.
In the big picture, it helps that the rookies are looking like they’ll make an impact relatively quickly. Zac Jackson of The Athletic had a nice rookie report, and the sentence that will make Browns fans sit up with their coffee was this one: second-round wide receiver Denzel Boston beat veteran cornerback Tyson Campbell with an outside move and caught what would have been about a 50-yard touchdown from Deshaun Watson.
Yes, yes, May. Shorts. No tackling. Please place all responsible disclaimers here. Still, a rookie wideout making a downfield play against a real NFL corner is better than the other thing.
Monken noticed, too. “(Boston) makes that catch against one of the most talented guys in the league,” he said. “So, it’s encouraging, right? That’s what you want to see. You want to see your guys, especially some of your younger draft picks, make those plays.”
The offensive line notes are probably more important, even if they are less likely to make anyone yell on the internet. Fano, the No. 9 overall pick, has been at left tackle. Austin Barber has been at right tackle. Parker Brailsford is working at center. Jackson reported that Fano and Brailsford were getting some No. 1 offense reps by the end of the open OTA, with Elgton Jenkins still working back from the injury that ended his 2025 season.
Monken’s line there was also useful: “The idea is to kind of ease (the rookies) in as they’re learning. So, you’d like to ease them, you’d love to ease them in, but eventually the easing has to end.”
There is the Browns’ offseason in one sentence. Ease them in. Then stop easing. Then hope it’s all comes together.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
Artemis moon base will cover ‘hundreds of square miles’ with hopping drones and new lunar rovers, NASA says
NASA is thinking big, and I mean big, big, which is nice because my personal planning horizon usually extends to whether there is enough coffee to get through this nonsense.
According to Space.com, NASA’s Artemis moon base vision now covers “hundreds of square miles” near the lunar south pole. Carlos García-Galán, manager of NASA’s Moon Base program, said, “We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon.”
The sprawl makes sense once you hear NASA explain it. Habitats need sunlight on hilltops. Nuclear power systems need to sit a kilometer or more away. The good science targets are not all in one convenient cul-de-sac. So, as NASA chief architect Nujoud Merancy put it, the thing starts “sprawling a little bit more like a city as you start building it out.”
The agency announced a 2028 MoonFall drone mission with Firefly Aerospace, lunar terrain vehicle production contracts for Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, and a phased plan that runs from scouting now through 2029, initial operating capability from 2029 to 2032, and semi-permanent crew presence after that.
Look, if humanity can figure out how to build a city at the lunar south pole, maybe the Browns can eventually figure out third-and-2. I am choosing hope this morning. Please do not report me.
When not wondering if two-spot OTA drills can be converted into a municipal energy source, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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