Browns return specialist role up for grabs

The Cleveland Browns had a stellar offense and a poor defense in 2020. Somewhere in the middle was the special teams. The Browns waived Austin Seibert early in the season, lost JoJo Natson to an ACL injury and saw Jamie Gillan have his ups and downs.

Cody Parkey, signed to replace Seibert, is back along with Gillan to handle the kicking responsibilities. As seen across the NFL for years, kickers often come and go without much notice. Rare is the kicker that sticks around a team for more than a couple of seasons. Punters tend to be a little more stable with many lasting for quite a long time.

With Parkey and Gillan expected to hold their roles, the biggest question on special teams is who will return kicks?

Last year, Donovan Peoples-Jones and D’Ernest Johnson were the team’s primary return men. Peoples-Jones returned 18 kickoffs and 18 punts while Johnson returned 14 kickoffs and three punts.

Neither had a great deal of success throughout the season but much of that is due to new rules, for safety, that limit return possibilities. In total in 2020, the NFL only saw seven kickoff return touchdowns and eight punt return touchdowns.

No one player had more than one of either and no player had a touchdown on both a kick and punt return.

That doesn’t mean the role isn’t important and, according to Cleveland’s special teams coach Mike Priefer, the Browns have some interesting options. “We have a lot of competition. We have a lot of different types of skillsets. For me, it is a wide-open job so we are going to see what happens here down the road,” Priefer said.

Priefer noted Natson, People-Jones and Johnson as candidates but added veteran Ryan Switzer and rookie Demetric Felton to the list as well.

When asked about rookie speedster Anthony Schwartz, Priefer seemed to try to temper excitement noting “Because he has not done it, we tried with punts a little bit early before he hurt his hamstring. He struggled a little bit because it is really new. It is a lot harder. Punts are harder to catch than kickoffs.”

As the Browns push for the playoffs, and more, their return specialist could rotate throughout the season unless someone grabs hold of the job during training camp.