AFC Notes: Browns, Colts, Texans

Browns

On Thursday, the Browns agreed to a three-year, $15.6 million extension with RB Duke Johnson.

Johnson mentioned in an interview with Sirius XM NFL Radio that Cleveland was the place he wanted to be for the foreseeable future.

“The decision to stay in Cleveland for me was long before we had Carlos Hyde or Nick Chubb,” Johnson said. “I knew that this is the place I want to be with the guys on the team now and the guys we had before. At the end of the day it’s all about winning.”

Colts

Earlier in the week, a report surfaced that Colts DE Chris McCain has been charged with battery stemming from a January incident.

On Thursday, Colts HC Frank Reich told reporters that McCain is currently away from the team while he deals with this situation.

“We sat down with Chris and we just all agreed that this would be the best thing,” Reich said, via the Indy Star.

Reich implied that McCain may not be apart of the team if it’s confirmed that he actually committed these acts.

“We talk a lot as a team that respect is something very important to us, not just as a team, but as an organization,” Reich said. “It’s one of our values. Respect in this building for one another, respect on the field for our opponent and respect for this community. We love this community and this city. As players, we want to be role models in the community. Respect is very important. And it’s everybody in the building. Everybody is held to the same standard. Any violation of that code, in general terms, would be something that would be taken seriously.”

Texans

Texans QBs coach Sean Ryan says that HC Bill O’Brien and the coaching staff have been redesigning their offense after studying other NFL and college teams to introduce new ideas and play to QB Deshaun Watson‘s strengths.

“I think he looked at the skill set of Deshaun and we looked a lot of different offenses,” Ryan said, via the Houston Chronicle. “We were looking for things we could build on and we talked to Deshaun about what he did in the past. It was a combination of different things. There’s a lot of influences from different places.”

While the Texans are willing to make changes to their offense, Ryan says they still don’t want to stifle Watson’s natural playing style.

“You really have to never suffocate what the guy can do,” Ryan said. “You never want to take that away, his instincts, his ability to make plays. You just want to make sure that you’re hitting the points with him of understanding when it’s smart to do those things and when it’s not.

“With a guy like him, one of the great things is you can talk to him about, ‘What do you think you need to improve on? What is it that you’d like to leave this spring with that’s saying, ‘Hey, I got better at this.’ I don’t know if you’d say it’s hard, but it’s always challenging. But it’s fun. It’s good.”