AFC Notes: Bengals, Browns, Ravens

Bengals QB Joe Burrow said the team has to move on from Sunday’s loss.

“We put that one behind us,” Burrow said, via Pro Football Talk. “It happened. We talked about the mistakes and everything we need to fix and now we’re on to this week.”

Burrow added the team understands how important these divisional games are.

“Every division game feels a little different,” Burrow said. “I think fans are a little more juiced up for division games. I think the city and I think players come out and play hard no matter what, but there’s a different intensity to division games.”

Browns

Browns’ DE Myles Garrett spoke to the media following the team’s decision to move on from WR Odell Beckham and says there is a lot to digest with the situation.

“I don’t know the full story and never will,” Garrett said, via Scott Petrak of BrownsZone.com. “There was a lot that transpired between OBJ’s side, Baker’s side, Stefanski, Berry, everybody. You can talk to him, you can ask him, but no one will truly know the truth. Just got to move on from here. Now we have to pick up the pieces and keep on striving for greatness. He’s gone and we’ve still got to win. Obviously, he was frustrated. We knew he wanted the ball more, everybody knew he wanted the ball more. But he never said anything about wanting a trade earlier this year, at least not to me. Upper management? I don’t know. For it to spiral out of control like this, I feel like it shouldn’t have gone this far. It was quicker than anyone expected. I wish we got a little bit more communication between upper management and the players, a little bit more knowledge of what was going on because it seemed just like it happened overnight. Things just like kinda snowballed. Wish we would have just known and that’s the tough part. I feel like that happens a lot in the league where things are just happening to players and we have to react instead of having some communication from the top down.”

Garrett also told the media that he wasn’t concerned about Beckham joining another team in the AFC North, despite the team currently sitting at last in the division.

“It might happen, but I’m not worried about it. I’m not scared of it,” Garrett said. “There’s great receivers everywhere that we have to worry about and if he goes to another good receiving corps, then we have to step up and prepare for it. We know what he can do. We see it on the practice field all the time. But there’s no need to worry about where he could go because we have a game Sunday and we already have some dominant receivers to worry about. No need to worry about the possibility, Twitter’s going to make up enough stories.”

Browns’ GM Andrew Berry believes that some of the blame falls on himself and HC Kevin Stefanski for lack of communication with Beckham throughout the situation.

“That does fall on us, me and Kevin, and it’s tough, I’ll be honest,” Berry said. “And I don’t know that we ever get it 100 percent right, just to be candid. But at the same time it’s a difficult and sometimes nuanced situation where, look, there are pieces of information, there are discussions, there are conversations that just aren’t appropriate to share in a broader context. There always is going to be an element of that people will want more or hope for more that unfortunately you just can’t always share. Any decision like this, the reality of it is you’re not necessarily going to get consensus anywhere and I think people realize that and acknowledge that. Some things don’t work out and my job is to make sure that I make the decisions that I think are in the best interest of the team.”

• Ian Rapoport reports that the Browns and WR Odell Beckham signed their settlement to finalize his release on Monday, which will allow the Browns to save money if he goes unclaimed and takes two years off of his contract. 

• If he goes unclaimed, the Browns would be on the hook for $4.25 million. Beckham also agrees not to seek termination pay since he will likely get to select his new team next week. If Beckham is claimed, his new team would owe him $7.25 million.

Ravens

Ravens OC Greg Roman called practice squad OL Cedric Ogbuehi a talented player but thinks he “a lot to catch up on.” 

“Cedric [Ogbuehi]? Cedric is a very talented guy, and he just got here. He has a lot to catch up on, but he’s working around the clock on it,” said Ogbuehi, via RavensWire. “He went back, got some things and flew right back across the country and got back to work to really try to catch up and learn what we do and how we call things. There’s a lot to learn. It’s pretty … There’s a lot there…”

Roman added that their coaching staff has had to get a lot of new players acclimated to their system this season. 

“So, just like all the new guys, [offensive line coach] ‘Joe D’ [Joe D’Alessandris] has been really … [Running backs coach] Craig Ver Steeg was doing that in the beginning of the year with the running backs, and now Joe D’Alessandris is really in sprint mode – he and [assistant offensive line coach] Rich [Angulo] – with the new offensive linemen.”