Reggie Ragland, Jaeon Darden adjust as late additions to Browns
BEREA − It’s a difficult transition to adjust to a new team. It’s even tougher to make that transition a dozen games into the season.
Add in an adjustment to a type of scheme you’ve never played before, and that’s the transition Reggie Ragland’s trying to make after signing with the Browns this week.
All Ragland can do is embrace the challenge and try to make it as expedient as possible.
“It’s going good,” the seventh-year linebacker said Friday, two days after he signed with the Browns when Sione Takitaki was placed on injured reserve with a season-ending ACL tear. “Just getting to know everybody and getting to know the system, being in a 4-3 this is really my first time besides being in Kansas City when I was there. But it’s fun getting adjusted and everything. I’m catching on quick, too.”
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The 2016 second-round pick of the Buffalo Bills has played linebacker his whole football career. However, even dating back to his time at the University of Alabama, he’s played in a more 3-4-centric base defense.
In the current NFL, the adjustments between a 3-4 and 4-3 aren’t necessarily as pronounced as they may have been a decade ago. So many defenses across the league run a variety of sub-packages which have blurred so many of the lines between the two that it’s almost negligible.
Still, after having spent time in Buffalo −albeit on injured reserve − before going to Kansas City, Detroit and, last season, the New York Giants, Ragland admits there’s a transition period that exists as he learned the Browns’ system under defensive coordinator Joe Woods.
“In a 3-4 you’re really spot dropping, but every now and then you gotta take over the overs,” Ragland said. “And in this defense you’ve got to take the specials and the overs a lot being that weak-side backer. So it’s an adjustment, but it’s football. I know I can go over.”
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Ragland’s had help in making the transition. It’s not just come in constant texts with linebackers coach Jason Tarver − who he calls a “straightforward guy” − or conversations with teammates.
It’s come in the form of another linebacker who was a midseason addition to the Browns who Ragland has known since both were in high school. Middle linebacker Deion Jones has played against Ragland in the SEC − Jones at LSU, Ragland at Alabama − and the two have remained close since both were 2016 second-round picks.
Jones, who came to the Browns in an Oct. 9 trade with the Atlanta Falcons, has been one of the players who Ragland had leaned on the most to get up to speed.
“It’s been good to have him in the room,” Jones told the Beacon Journal. “A vet. A lot of energy. Another personality to gel with us. We except him with open arms. Can’t wait to get him on the field in whatever fashion we can get him in.”
The expectation would be for Ragland to eventually provide some more depth, particularly at the strong-side linebacker position in the base look. Currently, he’s listed as the No. 2 at that spot behind Tony Fields II on the Browns’ unofficial depth chart.
However, both Woods and coach Kevin Stefanski have stopped short of saying Ragland would play on Sunday when the Browns travel to Cincinnati to face the Bengals. Stefanski, on Friday, said he was “still acclimating” to the scheme and that they ” want to make sure that he is continuing to understand our defense, our terminology and those type of things.”