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This offseason was a fairly eventful one in Cleveland. Here's a quick recap of the team's changes for this season (Second under new management).
Retired:
P Terry Blades - Tough Loss, and sort of unexpected at 13 years given how punters and kickers regularly go 15+ seasons.
Staff Changes:
Resigned Head Coach Rico Sprouse and Offensive Coordinator Marc Young to 5 year deals.
Brought in new blood in Defensive Coordinator Steve Borders from Texas, and Lead Scout Steven Vardell. Both signed 5 year deals as well.
In Free agency, some key players were added for this season:
WR Lorenzo Beaman will be competing for playing time in our WR corps, MLB T.J. Rydzak was brought in to be the primary backup to the Aging Sedrick Vance.
Rondell Benware was signed as a Defensive end Prospect and will be backing up Earl Caldwell.
Adrian Gunn is a prospect at corner added after the draft and he replaces the aging Neal Pearson.
P Earnest Jue takes over as our primary punter after the retirement of Terry Blades.
Clawz management was hard at work this offseason improving the team, Negotiating trades and hopefully bringing in some quality players. Here's the trade report for pre-week 1:
From Montreal: WLB Tracy Bisson and a 5th round pick. Cleveland sends LB Brett Riley and DT Richie Caldwell
From WVA: 1.27 pick (Ends up being WR Mitch Campbell) Cleveland sends 1st next year and 3.24
From TEX: 5th round pick. Cleveland sends veteran WR Otis Bentley
From VER: Speedster RB Marco Craig. Cleveland sends 5th in 2018.
The trades were hit and miss for the Clawz...Tracy Bisson and Marco Craig will definitely play at a high level for us and will make an immediate impact, but the draft picks we added ended up being players who were not as good as our scouts though (Mitch Campbell) or guys who did not make the team (5th round picks)
Draft picks of note:
1.26 WR Ralph "Bud" Weiser - We are really excited about this kid. With his high potential to catch the ball and pick up yards after the catch, the Perkins - Weiser connection could be something our opponents fear for a long, long time.
1.27 WR Mitch Campbell - See Also, "Bust"
We'll keep him on the team just to remind me that I need to do more research on first round picks. Also, a reminder not to trade with WVA ;-)2.25 RT Rusty Lane - Almost selected at 1.27 due to an error, we were really excited to see this kid fall to us in the second round. He needs some seasoning, but we feel that this kid will start at RT in a few seasons.
4.23 DT Teddy McCormick - He will be a backup to our two veteran DTs and may end up being a starter should those guys retire in a few seasons.
5.22 RB Leland Burlsworth - From his name you may think he looks like this:
Well, out of his pads, that may not be all that inaccurate.
But when he's on the field, he'll be our third down back and after he moves the chains he'll look back and say "Did I do that?"Clawz Management feels we're fielding a better team than we did last season when we went to the Conference finals, so our goals are high for this year. Watch out AC North, the Clawz are New and Improved
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