CLEVELAND, Ohio — Browns rookie receiver Isaiah Bond is active today against the Bengals, and will likely get a fair amount of playing time.
With Bond, the undrafted receiver out of Texas who signed with the Browns on Aug. 17, playing, another undrafted rookie receiver, Gage Larvadain, is inactive. Larvadain, signed as a free agent out of South Carolina, had an excellent preseason, and made the initial 53-man roster.
After Bond’s sexual assault charge was dropped, he joined the Browns late in camp and came up the learning curve quickly, flashing his 4.39 speed and excellent hands in camp. He also picked up the offensive extremely quickly.
“That’s the part that’s been very exciting working with Isaiah is how well he’s done on the mental side of the game,” receivers coach Chad O’Shea. “He’s blessed with having good intelligence, but he also works very hard, and he’s listened to not only the coaches, but he’s listened to some of the veteran players on just how to go about his daily routine and how to get out there and help the team as quickly as he can.”
Bond is listed behind Cedric Tillman on the depth chart, but the Browns will make a concerted effort to get him on the field and stretch the defense. At times, it might even be him and Jerry Jeudy when the Browns are in 12 personnel, or two tight end sets.
Besides, Joe Flacco has the cannon arm to get Bond the ball deep.
Another undrafted rookie who’s active today is defensive tackle Adin Huntington, signed as a free agent out of Tulane. Huntington made the roster after working out with Myles Garrett for three weeks in Dallas after minicamp.
“It doesn’t surprise me because he had what we’re looking for, which is movement skills at the defensive tackle,” defensive tackle Jim Schwartz said. “I watched his pro day from Tulane. One of our scouts brought it to us, Hajriz (Aliu), and you saw a powerful guy that could run in the 4.6s. He’s a little bitshorter, but there’s been some of those guys. But he was playing as like a base defensive end, sort of five technique and you had to sort of project his skill set to our defense. But we liked him inside, just watched a couple plays. He played with great effort, played with speed and made a big point to get him after the draft.
“So, hats off to those guys, but you know, early on there was a really steep learning curve because he was playing inside really for the first time as opposed to just playing a 3-4 defensive end. But, you know, once he got it, played with great effort, plays with great speed, like I said, our speed up front, our movement skills up front are so much improved and Adin’s part of that. Plus, he can do stuff on special teams too, and that’s a huge bonus to us.”
Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders will serve as the inactive 3rd QB today behind Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel, as expected.
Here the Browns inactives:
#12 QB Shedeur Sanders (3QB)
#51 DT Mike Hall Jr.
#70 G Zak Zinter
#72 T K.T. Leveston
#84 WR Gage Larvadain
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