Bengals

The Bengals made headlines by trading the No. 10 overall pick for Dexter Lawrence. Cincinnati second-year DE Shemar Stewart said Lawrence has been vocal about pushing him to improve. 

“He definitely came up to me and said he’s going to push me. Some days, I’m going to hate him, but it’s going to be for the better. He’s going to come in and try and push me to be the best version of myself,” Stewart said, via Geoff Hobson of the team’s site. 

Lawrence said he quickly got in touch with QB Joe Burrow after joining the Bengals and has gravitated toward him since coming in. 

“I hit him up, and he told me when he was coming in,” Lawrence said. “Good to see him. Just to learn him and his ways and his leadership … even me, gravitating toward him. I’m excited to play with him. Just to see how he leads the guys, his ways of handling adversity, or pressure, or anything. Just learning from him, too.”

Recently signed DE Boye Mafe called Lawrence a “natural leader.”

“Oh yeah. A natural leader,” Mafe said. “He leads the right way. He doesn’t force it on you. It’s natural and it comes natural. When you see a guy of his caliber work it the way he works it makes everybody understand you have to be up to your game.”

Browns

Browns QB Shedeur Sanders didn’t hire an agent when he was drafted, and his father Deion explained to the media why this was the case, as well as why there were some pre-draft rumors that had hurt Shedeur’s stock.

“That was the first time in my life that I couldn’t fix it,” Deion told Garrett Bush’s The Barbershop regarding Shedeur’s draft day slide. “I’ve always been able to fix it, with all my kids. But as that bulljunk was going on and everything was — I couldn’t fix it. And he wanted me to fix it. And I didn’t have the power to fix it. And that hurt, because I felt like I wasn’t there for my son. Why we didn’t have an agent? Well, you’re projected to go what, first or second, right? . . . I’ve been through this. So why do you need that? You know, it don’t make sense to give somebody four or five percent — three percent, whatever they get now — and you know where you’re slotted.”

“It was some ignorant things came out about [Shedeur] pre-draft and all that, and that was a lie,” Deion said. “Like he would never go into a meeting with headphones on. He would never go into a meeting unprepared. Like, that’s just not who he is. There’s no way he could accomplish the things he accomplished without being prepared. . . . So all that stuff was a lie, man. Now that bothers me. It didn’t bother him, but that bothered me. Because I knew where it came from. But we never, you know — we took the high road. I never said where it came from. I know. I’m connected like that with a lot of people. I was that before I was a coach. So we knew what time it was. So when people were talking in the Cleveland media and saying this and saying that, we just sit back and laugh, man.”

Ravens

Ravens QB Lamar Jackson enters the first season of his career without John Harbaugh as his head coach. Baltimore GM Eric DeCosta said Jackson has “great energy” this offseason and is learning new OC Declan Doyle‘s system. 

“I think he’s got great energy. He’s excited. I think he’s really done a great job being here, learning, learning the new approach of the offense and the terminology and all those things. It’s not an easy thing to do for anybody, but I just think it’s it’s just a great vibe,” DeCosta said, via RavensWire.