Brownie Bites: Defensive ends Myles Garrett and Za’Darius Smith miss practice due to injury Thursday

BEREA, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The defensive injuries continue to pile up, and it’s only Week 2.

Here’s the top Brownie Bites from Thursday.

Garrett and Za’Darius idle – Defensive ends Myles Garrett and Za’Darius Smith did not practice Thursday due to injuries. Garrett is dealing with a foot injury and Smith a back injury according to the injury report released by the team and filed with the league office on Thursday afternoon.

Candid assessment – Special teams coordinator and assistant head coach Bubba Ventrone was direct about how he saw the 33-17 loss to Dallas. “I think that overall our urgency as a team and our effort needs to be better overall,” Ventrone said. He later added, “We did not play well as a football team at all. That is not our standard…. I think we need to compete harder, we need to play harder, and we need to play with better effort across the board and a lot cleaner.”

Keep him clean – Deshaun Watson got hit 17 times last Sunday, including six sacks. “We got to block better, first off,” left guard Joel Bitonio said. “I think that's the number one thing. I think everybody had a few plays where it was like you can't let your guy hit him like that. And that's the main thing. From the line perspective, that's really what we can control. I know they're talking about playing on time and the routes and all that type of stuff, but as an alignment, you just got to block for as long as you can because you don't know what's going to happen back there.” Penalties on the offensive line didn’t help either – five were pre-snap illegal formation or false start flags. “That was frustrating” Bitonio said. “You don't want to put yourself behind the chain, especially a team like Dallas first and 15 second and 15 are just not the positions you want to be in. We had way too many of those and those are correctable.”

Early returns – With the introduction of the dynamic kickoff, teams recorded 1,548 kick return yards in Week 1, more kick return yards than any week last season and the most in a week since Week 16, 2022. “There was a good amount of explosive returns that happened in the league,” Ventrone said. “There was a touchdown, obviously in the Arizona game. There was really more the result of a few missed tackles rather than the scheme. But yeah, I thought there was definitely some excitement on the play.” The league said 33 percent of kickoffs were returned (57 of 172), up from 21 percent in Week 1 in 2023 (32 of 156).

Big legs – There were 21 made field goals of 50-or-more yards in Week 1, surpassing Week 3 of the 2023 season (15) for the most in a single week in NFL history. Dustin Hopkins hit a 51 yarder for the Browns last week.

Another to IR – Rookie cornerback Myles Hardin was placed on injured reserve making him the fifth defender put on IR this week. Harden has a shin injury. The team signed linebacker Michael Barrett to the practice squad.

Jag down – The Jaguars placed cornerback Tyson Campbell on the injured reserve list due to a hamstring injury Thursday.

Perspective matters – Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz hopes the Week 1 loss to Dallas will be an early wake up call for the Browns. “I think the message there is anytime you lose a game, there is immediate, there might be a little bit more urgency to confront your problems and not gloss over things and self-correct, and to be more determined to go out and correct that,” Schwartz said. “And maybe sometimes when you win, sometimes you can lose that. And when I took over Detroit years ago, that was a team that was used to dealing with failure. They had trouble dealing with success. It was like they won a game and it went to our heads really quickly. And particularly the first couple of years, that was a difficult process to go through. Sometimes it's harder to deal with success in this league than it is to a failure, but I think if we do our job as players and as coaches, and you guys write the story of the 2024 browns, and if this is a successful season for us, I hope that we can all look back and say, you know what? They lost that opener, but in the long run that was a good thing for this team. And if that's the case, then we can turn that towards something good. If we fail to correct our issues and confront our problems and confront our execution and those kind of things, then it won't have had the effect that we hope it would.”

Injury report – DNP: CB Myles Harden, TE David Njoku (ankle), CB Denzel Ward (shoulder), DE Myles Garrett (foot), DE Za’Darius Smith (back); LIMITED: LG Joel Bitonio (elbow), OT Jack Conklin (knee), LS Charlie Hughlett (foot), DT Dalvin Tomlinson (knee),DE Alex Wright (triceps/elbow), LT Jedrick Wills Jr.; FULL: C Nick harris (knee), WR Jerry Jeudy (knee), LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (hand)