Browns Cut Their Roster to 53 to Prepare for Sunday’s Opener Against Baltimore

It was a very active day for the Browns, as today they waived 24 players, bringing the roster down to the required 53 before the NFL’s 4 p.m. deadline.

QB Kevin Davidson
QB Garrett Gilbert
RB Dontrell Hilliard
RB Benny LeMay
FB Johnny Stanton
WR Ja’Marcus Bradley
WR Damion Ratley
WR Taywan Taylor
T Brady Aiello
T Alex Taylor (injured)
C Jon Toth
G Michael Dunn
G Willie Wright
DE Robert McCray
DE Chad Thomas
DT Daniel Ekuale
LB Solomon Ajayi
LB Willie Harvey
LB Montrel Meander
CB A.J. Green
CB Robert Jackson
CB Donovan Olumba
S Elijah Benton
S Javonte Moffatt

The team had the issues of not having any preseason games to go by, and EVP of Football Operations and General Manager Andrew Berry and Head Coach Kevin Stefanski did what they could to find out what players were good enough for the roster.

“We always take and evaluate all the training camp practices, evaluate every snap, every rep and really try and get as good of a feel for our guys as we can,” Berry said.

“We worked closely with our coaches and solicited their feedback as well as from our pro staff and our scouts. We really spent a lot of time on our roster. Where it’s a little bit different is you don’t get the preseason games, but we feel like we had enough information, enough film to make informed decisions on all 53 guys who made the team based on the practices we had throughout this month.”

Stefanski said it was group effort to come up with the group that will take the field next Sunday in Baltimore against the Ravens.

“It’s been a dialogue that’s been ongoing,” Stefanski said.

“We check in with each other on the personnel and coaching side almost every four days to make sure we’re evaluating these guys and finding the best 53 players we could.

“I thought Andrew and his staff and the coaching staff got together and really worked extremely well together to put a team of 53 players that we’ll go to work with starting next Sunday.”

Of the 53 players, 33 are returning members of the 2019 team. The remaining 20 came to Cleveland in the following ways leading up to Saturday’s transactions: 11 via free agency, six through the 2020 NFL Draft, two via trades and one via waivers.

“We share a vision of how this team is going to play, but also, we went into this process very open-minded and wanting to keep the best 53 players,” Stefanski said. “We didn’t have any hard, fast rules of how many we were keeping at any given position. The way the roster shook out is based on the performance of those players.”