What did 9 days in West Virginia do for the Cleveland Browns? | Greenbrier takeaways

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Eight practices in nine days. If the Browns turn that into an 8-9 season, will the time they spent at The Greenbrier Resort have been worth the trouble?

Naturally, it wouldn't have been worth it. No trip anywhere can be justified in a zero-sum business like the NFL if the season ends with a losing record and another year of missing the playoffs.

What happens, though, if the Browns turn their end-of-July excursion to West Virginia into an end-of-January trip to someplace like Kansas City, Buffalo or Cincinnati? That's where the correlation can get complicated.

Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski sold the trip to The Greenbrier as an opportunity to bring the team closer together. The hope was the time spent in the middle of the West Virginia mountains would serve as an accelerant for team chemistry, chemistry which has been lacking in recent seasons.

Yet, even Stefanski acknowledged at the start of the trip a level of difficulty in tangibly showing cause and effect in that regard.

"Yeah, I don't know that you do," Stefanski said following the first West Virginia practice on July 22. "Team building and team bonding, that's organic. I really think just being on a bus together, you're building your team, being on an airplane, being around each other, what this allows us to do is we're landlocked here, we're in the middle of nowhere by design, so it forces you to be around your teammates."

The effort is admirable by Stefanski. Nor is it the only time this season the Browns will be together for an extended period of time outside of Northeast Ohio.

There's still essentially five days in Philadelphia next month for joint practices and a preseason game. There's also a week in Los Angeles between the Nov. 26 game at the Denver Broncos and the Dec. 3 game at the Rams that, while not officially announced, seems to be a given at this point.

That is, if you add up the non-game days away from home, at least 20 days the Browns will be together on the road beyond the typical travel. That's a lot of time to bond in fancy hotels.

The endgame, though, is simple. If the Browns finish with just their fourth winning season and their third playoff appearance since their 1999 rebirth, then the trips will all be a success because the season was a success.

If eight practices in nine days in West Virginia turn into what has occurred the other 21 seasons in that span, if it's yet another season gone off the rails by December, then what happened at The Greenbrier will be viewed as a cautionary tale. It will look the way many cynical types viewed it before, as a "Hail Mary" thrown by a coach who knows a third consecutive losing season mean he'll likely be looking elsewhere after the season.

That the main takeaway from more than a week in West Virginia. Here's a few more from what occurred on the field.

Kevin Stefanski's main on-field goal was load management

The Browns made the trip to The Greenbrier in part because they were looking to do something different with the extra week of training camp they got along with a spot in Thursday's Hall of Fame Game in Canton. Instead of grinding through the additional days in Berea, they got away for a bit somewhere else.

Along those same lines, Stefanski planned the practice schedule very much with that in mind. Knowing the collective bargaining agreement already sets limits on contact and equipment on various practice days, he decided to go extra-conservative in how far he pushed on a given day.

Saturday was the first substantial offense-vs.-defense, full-contact practice, but it rarely rose to the level of ultra-intense. It seemed like everyone was conscious of the plan, which was to get the ramp-up process going, but not accelerated.

Myles Garrett showing more visible leadership traits

One of the big topics in the month before camp was former Browns defensive tackle Malik Jackson going on NFL Network and questioning the leadership qualities of a 2021 version of Myles Garrett. It remained the topic when Garrett took questions last Tuesday.

"I think leadership is natural to most people," Garrett said Tuesday. "I think it just comes in different shapes and forms. Some people lead with examples, some people lead out front with their chest or their words. It just all really depends on you and your style. … There's just different ways to do it and as we grow up and develop and mature, things start to blend, you start to pick up on those things, they start to come more naturally."

Garrett is entering his seventh NFL season. The former No. 1 pick was much more visible at The Greenbrier interacting with his teammates, especially the younger defensive linemen.

Is it a sign of a maturing Garrett or a simple coincidence? If it's the former, it may be a huge step forward for the Browns to actually find the next level in both their star edge rusher and their own season expectations.

Deshaun Watson's at least putting in the work to improve

The questions about the Browns' success this season start with the success of quarterback Deshaun Watson. Watson himself understand that, as he's said repeatedly.

The six games he started for the Browns were not good a year ago. They were on the heels of more than a year spent battling more than two-dozen allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct by women in massage appointments, of which only two lawsuits remain active.

This year, Watson has set out to try and repair things. The off-the-field repairs are for another discussion at another time.

However, the on-the-field work to get back to being the three-time Pro Bowler he was with the Houston Texans was very evident. On days when the temperature soared near 90 and the humidity made it impossible not to sweat standing still, Watson was routinely working on some aspect of his game with a coach long after practice was over.

Can it show itself in actual games? We're going to find out.

Hall of Fame Game is going to be about Kellen Mond and Dorian Thompson-Robinson

If this takeaway surprises you, then you must not be paying attention to how almost any team handles the Hall of Fame Game. Stefanski essentially admitted as much when he talked about it as "preseason game 0" earlier in the week.

It's clear almost no one who is going to be of critical importance will play Thursday. Well, no one but specialists.

So if you're looking for an early position battle that could at least generate some buzz, then look at the two QBs likely to be the only two Browns QBs to play Thursday: Kellen Mond and Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

Otherwise, sit back and just enjoy the fact NFL football is back on the field.

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: What did 9 days in West Virginia do for Browns?: Greenbrier takeaways