Browns rookie offensive tackle Dawand Jones has some lofty gridiron goals.
A man mountain at 6-8, 374 and the biggest player on the team, Jones, stuck it out through the practice despite being doubled over at times, and never contemplated giving up. Callahan rode him hard like he does everyone else, making him repeat a rep over and over until he got it right, puking be damned.
On the final day of eight practices at The Greenbrier Sports Complex in late July, Jones stalked away from a pass rush drill and whipped his helmet into the grass. A few moments later, he picked it up and trying again to execute the dang thing just like Conklin did.to OSU gridiron greatCallahan, seemingly a bit dubious at first, began warming up to him, noting how hard he worked and how much he cared.
“We had an o-lineman go down with an injury early in the week and I figured I was probably going to play the whole game,” Jones said. “I’m used to doing that. It was honestly fun to be able to play a whole NFL game even though I wasn’t seeing really exotic pressures or anything. It was just good to get the speed of the game, everything down. I really wasn’t nervous or anything like that. I felt like God put me here for this moment, just for me to go capture it.
When Conklin exited the first of the two joint practices with a concussion, Jones stepped in with the ones and used the tips Thomas gave him to help him hold his own against the Eagles’ premier defensive linemen. “Sometimes those guys don’t really want to be great as much as they just became great because of their God-given abilities. But Dawand really seems to have the ‘it,’ that he wants to be great and I think in a lot of ways that’s the difference between the great players in the NFL and the guys that just kind of have a decent career and are never really able to tap their full potential.”“He critiques my game,” Jones said. “I try to pick his brain and ask him what I need to do to get better.
“If you run into , he’s going to kill you,” Thomas said. “A guy like T.J. who can bend and run fast will probably be his hardest matchup. He’s going to try to get him off balance and he’s going to try to get low and go around him with quickness and speed.”Jones, who turned 22 on Aug. 6, finally went head-to-head with Garrett late in camp, with the four-time Pro Bowler getting the best of him most reps.
In Philadelphia, Jones got to watch Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata — also a ginormous 6-8, 365 — work against Garrett and fellow Pro Bowl edge-rusher Za’Darius Smith. “I just want to eventually master and go to the left side and probably master the left side,” he said. “ understand the physics and everything on left tackle.”
But with his burgeoning size — 6-3 by 8th grade — his coaches talked him into giving football a whirl. Mississippi offered him, and the calls flooded in. Ohio State sent a contingent to Ben Davis and was sold. They gauged his commitment to football, and were satisfied.’s Nathan Baird in 2021.
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