Todd Monken Breaks Down Browns QB Battle and Draft Room Dynamics

0:00This was 19 in the cold and rain when my father drove me through all that basket. Been looking forward to this for a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, new head coach Todd Munkin in studio with us as we get ready for a 2026 NFL season coach. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate you having me. You can watch them live on YouTube, 92-3, the fan on YouTube. First off, how do you feel after the draft? Fantastic. Did you find it odd that you were asked if you got the best offensive lineman in the draft considering he was the first offensive lineman off the board in the draft? For sure, we feel like we got the best offensive lineman in the draft. And I said it afterwards that how cool was it that we were able to trade back and get two other picks and still get the player that we were looking to take when we were drafting at six. I'm hearing a lot of good things. I thought the first two days, I was just so excited,

1:01so surprised about how it fell to us in the first two days. And then day three, Parker Brailsford's a guy that you guys are really excited about this center out of Alabama. Can you tell us a little bit more about him? Well, I think if you get beyond the size, I think that's the sticking point for some teams. He falls below the line in terms of size that they want. For us, I don't see it that way. I think Tyler Linderbaum was not the biggest center. And he just got 27 million per year. We like athleticism. If you if you turned on the tape from last year and you didn't know it, it wasn't. Now, there'll be some things. Obviously, if you get a zero nose and you're playing some odd teams, that's it's not ideal. But there's ways of working around that. And we we were jacked to get him when we did coach, your role in the draft room. I know there was an embedded reporter that was kind of laying out, you know, what you were saying at times. I'm sure not all of it was something you wanted everybody to be privy to, but just you getting to be in these rooms over the years. How

2:01is your role evolved from? Hey, your offensive coordinator to now the head guy, the head coach, and how much were they leaning on you? Well, most of the role changed before the draft more than during the draft. I would say at that point, Andrew's making the selection. That's what he's paid to do. I mean, he's a general manager. Would he run things by me and say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking or I'd say, what do you think? And we're five picks out. What do you think in here? Well, we're thinking this, this, this, if not, we're going to make this trade. We're going to do this. What I was super impressed with was how proactive Andrew is. One way or the other moving back, moving up, talking to other teams, like him and his team that were a part of it was very impressive. I've been in other rooms, and I thought it was as well done as anywhere I've been, and it fell the right way in terms of for us, in terms of what we were hoping, the picks that we got, and I don't always work out that way, but it was great when it did. Well, David, have a rival exec, and someone you work with, like Eric Takosta lavish praise on what the Browns did. And I thought it

3:01was also interesting. I mean, you're there and you've been in other rooms or you've seen it. This seemed like a Wall Street simulation. What can you tell people about the outfit, Andrew Berry, and everybody, being able to put together something like that that goes through every single scenario when it comes to trade downs. I think people would be amazed to think about how sophisticated the system was. Well, each team does it a little bit differently. But I would say this that I think, not only with the place I was before in Baltimore, and also here, what you see is you're trying to eliminate anxiety. That's all you're trying to do is you've already you've already in a lot of ways set the board how it would who you would take it felt a certain way. Now the only part of that is in the trades that comes in that that changes the landscape. If nobody ever traded it would be easy to fall like I'm picking this, picking this, picking this, picking this, but when the landscape changes, I think, you know, Andrew and his guys did a great job of working through the other scenarios that led to the picks that we ended up. And then what is it like having the top guy in the room

4:04next to Jimmy Haslam? It was really cool. I realized I was the head coach. I mean, right next to the owner and in between the general manager, I guess that's what I do. I'm the head coach. But really, at that moment, besides the sounding board, I was just there for the fist bumps and second guy on the phone. That was really what I was there for. And again, that's that's their job. And I've said it a million times, you know, just like Andrew's going to trust what we do on fourth and one, we're going to trust the picks that he makes. And now it's up to us to develop the players. Do you think at time I can joining us in studio, how important is play calling? And the reason I ask it is because in my world, okay, you, if you win, you will get zero credit. We won't even think about it. If you lose, we, there will be call after call about what you did on third down. Now, we're just watching on Sundays. He knows I know there's a lot of things that goes into that that the general public doesn't know. So on the base of everything, how important is play calling during a game? Well, my wife always says what I just call the plays at work seems so simple. Why would you ever call plays that don't work? Which I would agree with that. It's more fun that way.

5:06I think we're really becomes critical. Just like I would say, even in the draft is when the landscape changes, just like in the draft, trade proposals, making decisions when the landscape changes in a game, whether it's situational two minute four minute, are you going to go for it? Are you not? When are you going to run a trick play? When are you going to take chances? I think that's when it comes up calling run down plays. I mean, I'm calling it off the sheet. I mean, there's variances of what you're going to call run pass. They're all on there. We all think they're pretty good. To me, it comes down to reminding yourself, touches who you want to get the ball to that can certainly get, you know, you can get clouded, you know, looking at the whole call sheet of who you need to get the ball to. So I, again, I think it's important. I think it's a little bit overblown because if you've got good players and you've done a great job during the week in your preparation, so the players, and you've created a system that lets their talent shine, I think that's really the most critical part of it is during the week and developing a system and getting really good players. So then

6:07Sunday's just a byproduct of the work you put in. You've been a play call. You've been an offensive coordinator a long time and I know you've been a head coach before, okay? But I think I've seen in some cases around the league where guys they go from offensive coordinator to head coach and they sometimes get caught, maybe not managing the game, maybe the way they should. You're in that area where you go from yards and it's points to like, hey, I got defense and special teams, I got to take care of each other here. How do you plan on balancing that on on a Sunday as the head coach now? No, it's certainly a challenge. There's no way around it. It's, I still find myself every now and then referring to myself like I'm the offensive coordinator. You just do when I say like we it's like, hell, I'm in charge of it all. And ultimately, I'm now in charge of winning. When you're a coordinator, you're in charge of scoring or stopping them. When you're position coach, you're in charge of developing your position room. That's it. The winning is now solely on the head coach. So that is a part of it. I've already been through it for three years at Southern Miss. So we're going to find out. Todd Muckin head coach of the Browns in studio with us. When somebody

7:08new takes over whether it's a college program or the NFL, they got to make it their identity. They got to build this in their identity. Is there something and this doesn't have to be a day get who's been here before? But is there something you came in immediately and said, I want to do it this way? And I'm going to make this my own, whether it's something accountability, whether it's a messaging, whatever it is, is there something to put your the Todd Muckin stamp on the Cleveland Browns? Well, first off, I have a ton of respect for Kevin Stafansky. He is a fantastic football coach. You don't get to be a head coach in the NFL and not be a fantastic football coach. I an identity is a little bit strong. I've said it before that I think I've said this a ton of times, but I really believe this as much as I love winning and I hate losing, I despise crappy football. And I just think that it's just such a bad look for coaching. It just is it you look dumb as a coach when you put bad football on the field. You want it to look like you want it to look like if we ran power 62 plays in the game, they might be pissed off that we ran power 62

8:10times. But if it looks like that's our identity and we're going to be a physical team and it looks like you want it to look like you can live with it. But when you go out there and if you're jumping off sides, you have 10 on the fields, you got 12 on the field, the quarterback has anxiety at the line of scrimmage. Guys are going the wrong way. And that's an indictment on coaching and that's an indictment on us. So that's the starting point. You want to give yourself a chance. And that's give yourself a chance. More games are lost in their one. And that's that's the starting point for us as a team. Time again, joining us in studio right now. So I want to again clarify. And I think you've said this before, you do want to have a starting quarterback on your team that you know is on your depth chart. Number one before training can't correct. Would love to. Okay, you would love to. You're not necessarily stuck in cement on that idea then. Well, I would love to have that. I'm not there yet. So I can't say that. We still have. We've been on the field three practices, which was awesome to get out there with our players. I was talking to Carson yesterday. He said, feels so weird that we got from phase one to get on the field. And then now we're back off for

9:11three weeks. But it's always changing based on what you see. I don't have a history with any of our players. I know where this is heading. I mean, but I don't have a history with any of the players. They're all external to me. Just like when I interviewed coaches for the coordinator position, there was no internal candidates. I wasn't here. They're all external to me. So all the players are external other than Tyler Wallace, who was with us. So at the point is what I've seen after three days, okay, that gives us a little bit of a 40,000 foot view of where we're at. But that can change. Once we get back on the field for four weeks at the end of this spring, we'll have a better idea than. But there's only so many reps you get. You've got to start to target towards who's going to start opening day. And now that can still change and that can change even if someone's getting two thirds of the rep to someone getting a third of the reps because you're still going to play preseason games. Still going to want to see those guys at quarterback and see how they play. Why is it important for the rest of the team to figure out who that guy is before training camp actually starts? I think you're talking about our players. I think it's important for them to have

10:13an idea of the identity of the team and have a belief in whoever that is. Ultimately, the balls and that player's hands every down. So and you're going to come down to four minute, two minute end of game scenarios. You have close games every week of belief system that this guy's going to take us to the promised land, which is starting with a winning team, winning the division, right, winning a Super Bowl, all those things. I don't think players care. I just think they want to know who's going to give us the best chance to win. Who do we believe in that's going to give us the best chance to win? Because through all the money and all of that, there's nothing like the feeling in the locker room when you win. Now, I think that's what players still crave to be a part of winning and to be able to wear your your browns gear with pride. Hey, I'm a Cleveland Brown. You know, before a big trial, a judge will instruct a jury, you got to be impartial. You got to delete anything you might have heard about this case, get it out of your mind. Can you possibly do that and be that objective when it comes to two quarterbacks, both very, very famous dudes,

11:13everything that Dishon Watson has been through and the stuff he's put on tape six years ago and stuff he's put on tape with the Cleveland Browns over the last how many years and then Shedore and everything that comes along with Shedore Sanders. Can you possibly be that objective? Well, I think there's levels of being objective. Man, I'm not Patrick from SpongeBob. I don't live under a rock. I mean, I sit there and I I hear things. I see things. You're you're part of that. But I've learned over the years in coaching is your job is to let the play let it play itself out. I said that many of times like I'm going to let all of the students take the test. You know, I'm not going to walk in the classroom and before they even take a test, I'm going to observe the students and give them a grade based on what? How they look, how they dress, like nationality, male, female. My job is to let it play out. And sometimes players have a you know, they have a fresh start is maybe the best way to put it or a different style or a different system. So it's my job to do that. And to me, it's the only way. Now, you can have you can be so again,

12:14I would just say there's levels of being objective, right? There's there's levels are like, okay, I believe this player has something more in there or there's others where I'm just going to be stubborn and say, no, this isn't it. This isn't the direction we're going. And I think that's unfair to every player. I don't care. I know we're talking about quarterbacks, but I'm going to just in general with the players is it's our job to put the best players on the field to give us a chance to win. And how are we going to do that by being objective? Well, Ken lectured me earlier today and said the internet isn't real. And so I see I come in today at Brown's international headlines, like Shiloh Sanders sex this comment draws backlash tells Brown's reporter to go make a sandwich. How can you make sure to disassociate any of that stuff with a very serious competition that you are having because you know, everybody has a platform now and everybody's weighing in on every decision. We had it happen with the prior coach. How can you make sure that that stuff doesn't bleed into what you guys are doing? Well, we're talking about on the right up here. First off, I think it's awesome. I mean, it's why we get paid so much. I mean, we get paid so much

13:15because fans care and it's you talk about it. If it wasn't talked about, I sure as hell wouldn't get paid what I get paid. So that's part of what we do. But if that's going to bother me or it's going to bother Shidur or Dishon, they have no chance of being either the head coach here or the quarterback at the Cleveland Brown. I mean, for God's sakes, it's the world we live in. I think some would told me years ago that if the president has a 55% approval rating, he's killing it. What? Fine. That comes with the territory of what we do and ultimately what we do on the field is what matters most. And I said it and there's more to it than just saying, but it really is. You want to stop the narrative? Play well. Most of the narrative, win. It's really that simple. Now, there's more that goes into that because I got scrutinized by just saying, oh, winning. I know there's more to it. I get that. But ultimately, that's what it is. It's any narrative. Tom Muggen joining us in studio head coach here, Cleveland Brown. So last week you mentioned 2019 with us during the draft. I know from an NFL films clip, I saw you mentioned 2019. I

14:20didn't ask you to rip anybody from 2019. All right. I mean, if you want to find, go ahead. What do you plan on doing different though? Cause I know 2019 bothers you. That was supposed to be a real good football team and it wasn't. What do you plan on doing differently? Well, it's a different staff. It's, it's a different moment in time than then. And again, I, I owe a lot to Freddie for hiring me and Freddie Kitchens is a good football coach. We just didn't do it well collective.