CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Browns are teaching their new dawgs old tricks with Kevin Stefanski’s “return to toughness” mantra for 2025. .
All-Pro left guard Joel Bitonio, for one, is here for it.
“Overall I think we just had the wrong mentality (in 2024) and I think Coach Stefanski has already stressed the toughness that we need to bring back, how practice is going to be,” Bitonio said at the Browns Foundation Golf Tournament on Monday. “I think rookie minicamp and the OTAs have already kind of picked up that tempo. We’re not resting on any laurels of playoffs or anything like that. It’s a new team and we have to establish our standard and what we want the Browns to be.”
The pace of rookie minicamp and organized team activities was already faster and the intensity greater than ever before in the Stefanski era. More reps were packed into each drill, and players had very little down time between periods. It will be the same at mandatory minicamp next week and during training camp in late July, with heavy emphasis on toughness in the trenches to help hoist the Browns out of their 3-14 hole.
“We’ve got to be tough upfront,” Bitonio said. “We’ve got to turn 2, 3 yard runs into 4 and 5 yard runs. Our defense has to be tough. It’s all toughness. It starts at training camp and just having that ability to go to battle and when things do not go (well), it’s a long season. You’re going to lose some games, but how do you bounce back? How do you not let one loss turn into two? So yeah, we’ve got to be tough upfront for sure.”
Special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone, [who called out the Browns last season](https://www.cleveland.com/browns/2024/09/one-browns-coordinator-has-some-tough-talk-about-what-was-missing-vs-cowboys-and-why-its-vital-to-fix-it-vs-jaguars.html) for not playing hard enough in the 33-17 opening-day loss to Dallas, lauded the return to toughness on Wednesday at organized team activities.
“I feel like with our whole team, not just the kicking game, I feel the players are bought in on making it harder and just working harder,” Ventrone said. “And I think that Kevin’s done a really good job on sending a message on how we need to attack this season, this offseason program, obviously in the training camp, in the season, but I feel like our whole team, coaching staff understands what we need to do.”
Ventrone, who won a Super Bowl with the Patriots as a special teams player and as a coach, learned all about toughness from Bill Belichick, arguably the greatest coach of all time. One of the toughest players Belichick has coached, Ventrone knows what it takes to hoist the Lombardi trophy, and likes the effort he’s seeing so far this offseason. The Browns also had plenty of toughness instilled in them last season by former consultant Mike Vrabel, another Belichick disciple and current Patriots head coach.
“I think it does feel different,” Ventrone said. “I do. I think it feels different when you finish a season like we did, and not really talking about last season, but nobody was happy with how that season played out. And everyone’s doing our best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
In addition to increasing the intensity and tempo of practices, the Browns have completely overhauled their health and performance staff to bring out more of the beast in their players. They were among the league leaders in man-games lost to injuries last season, and are leaving no stone unturned in their quest to reduce them. Browns left tackle Dawand Jones, who underwent surgery in 2023 to repair a torn meniscus and again last season to mend a broken fibula, is already a beneficiary of the revamp. Under the guidance of new Director of Performance Nutrition Kelsey Fahy, he’s lost about 20 pounds of body fat and increased his muscle mass.
“We worked in the offseason together and we came up with a great plan and it definitely came together and it’s worked out for me,” he said. “I pride myself on that.”
Under new offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren, the Browns, who finished 29th in rushing, will also return to more of a gritty, rugged AFC-North style ground game, featuring a return to the outside zone, with power schemes mixed in. It’s already a huge hit with Bitonio, who’s watched clips of Bloomgren’s hard-nosed coaching from other places he’s been.
“Then he gets out on the field and you feel his presence,” Bitonio said. “The O-line coach kind of needs to be a (expletive). You need that, and it kind of rubs off on the guys and he’s been great. I think he’s developing the young guys trying to get them to work, but it’s been awesome.”
In all three phases of the game, the Browns are bringing that dawg mentality, the ones their longtime fans know and love.
“We just want to hold our guys as coaches, holding ourselves, holding our players, players holding their peers 100% accountable,” offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. “Not letting details slip through the cracks, not letting things fall by the wayside. A lot of that’s mental toughness. So when you talk about callusing the team and having that toughness, a lot of it’s just mentally making sure that we’re all up to the standard at which we want to hold ourselves to, players and coaches.”
It remains to be seen how it will translate to wins, but there’s plenty of tough talk coming out CrossCountry Mortgage Campus this spring.
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