AFC Notes: Nick Chubb, Justin Tucker, Bengals, Browns Job Security, Ravens

Bengals

Bengals Director of Player Personnel Duke Tobin addressed the team focusing on the offensive side of the ball while neglecting the defensive side.

“I feel as strongly about the defense as I feel about the offense in terms of necessity, and it’s got to work together,” Tobin said, via PFT. “You’re always going to be a little heavier on one side of the ball or the other, depending on how you’re paying your team. There can be an imbalance based on that, but you still have to have a complementary team. We believe we can outscore anybody. That’s our mindset, that’s who we are, that’s what we’ve always been about. But you always have to take care of the other side of the ball.”

• New Bengals DE Shemar Stewart on having just 4.5 sacks last season at Texas A&M: “This past year I was getting there at the same time it was just technical things on the way to the quarterback I need to refine. It’s not like I can’t get there, I also led the team in pressures. It’s just minor technical difficulties on my end.” (Paul Dehner Jr.)
• Cincinnati DC Al Golden on Stewart’s tackling: “I think there’s a lot of plays where he’s diving or reaching and a lot of that’s because of his effort, so I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘He’s missing tackles.’ I think it’s getting near a lot of balls a lot of guys can’t get to and we’ve got to help him finish better.” (Kelsey Conway)

Browns

Browns owner, Jimmy Haslam, expressed his confidence in GM Andrew Berry and HC Kevin Stefanski.

“Well, we sat here last year and Kevin was a two-time out of four years coach of the year and Andrew was regarded as one of the top executives in pro football at the age of 37 years old,” Haslam said on Monday, via Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal. “So, I don’t think they forgot how to coach. I don’t think they forgot how to do personnel. There are things both of them can do better. There are things our entire organization could do better. It’s a little bit of everything that could go wrong that did go wrong, but I don’t want to make any excuses. They can both do better, but we have high confidence in both of them.”

• Berry on if ownership encouraged them to draft QB Shedeur Sanders: “Jimmy (Haslam) lets us do our job.” (Cameron Wolfe)
• Berry would not close the door on the potential return of RB Nick Chubb, but said that the complexion of the running back group changed in the draft. (Scott Petrak)
• Browns OLB Julian Okwara‘s one-year, $1,337,500 deal includes a $40,000 signing bonus, $200,000 of his $1,170,000 base salary is guaranteed, and up to $127,500 in per-game roster bonuses. (OverTheCap)

Ravens

Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said he “periodically” gets updates regarding K Justin Tucker and said the team drafted K Tyler Loop because he was the best kicker in the draft.

“No, I haven’t really thought about that at this point,” DeCosta said, via Pro Football Talk. “I just thought he was a really talented player, and it made sense for us to do that for a lot of different reasons. We’ve told you guys multiple times this spring that we would look at kickers, and so, for us, it’s like any other position this year. We evaluated all these guys, we felt like he was draftable. We felt like he was the best kicker. It made sense for us to take him.”