Cleveland Browns Training Camp Report: Day 13 - Playing Time

The Cleveland Browns had their final practice Thursday morning before their game against the Packers. Head coach Pat Shurmur decided to have the team go without pads, probably hoping to prevent any minor injuries that would hold players out of the camp.

TRAINING CAMP REPORT - DAY 13 (8/11/11)

1. Shurmur Talks About the Playing Time: After practice ended, head coach Pat Shumur talked about the amount of playing time he anticipated giving his players this Saturday. It was pretty standard for a first preseason game, and it goes like this:
    
   1st Quarter: First-teamers
   2nd Quarter: Second-teamers
   3rd Quarter: Second-teamers
   4th Quarter: Third-teamers
    
   It'll be important for those third-stringers to fight for a roster spot since they haven't received a lot of opportunities in training camp.
    
2. Injury Report: After missing parts of practice on Wednesday, defensive end Jayme Mitchell and offensive lineman Dominic Alford were practicing again. Linebacker Chris Gocong remained sidelined, and safety Usama Young's hamstring acted up, causing him to leave the session early. Similarly, safety Eric Hagg left practice after banging his knee a little bit.
    
3. Skrine Continues to Shine: Cornerback Buster Skrine had a good day of practice, defending receiver Greg Little well twice, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. On one play, he defended a pass by Seneca Wallace. On another play, Colt McCoy looked like he completed a pass to Greg Little, but it was stripped by Skrine, who also ended up coming up with the ball at the same time.
    
4. Fujita Gets in on the Action: Unless a linebacker records an interception, you don't hear much about them in practice. That's what Fujita did Thursday morning, as he picked off a pass thrown by Seneca Wallace.
    
5. C. Mitchell Has Best Practice Yet: I'd like to give a special shout out to Daniel Wolf, who made his final live training camp report of the season on Thursday. In his final report, he spent a lot of time talking about how Carlton Mitchell had his best practice yet. Read about it more here.
    
6. Staring Down Moore Too Much? Wolf also noted that it seemed like when Evan Moore came in on some plays, it started seeming like Colt McCoy was starring him down too much. If that's the case, hopefully he breaks that habit before defenses catch on.
    
7. Watson Getting it Done: We've heard about the other tight ends on the roster, but Ben Watson is still getting it done in camp. He came away with several key red zone passes in practice today.
    
8. Pat Shurmur (On if he’s worried there will be injuries because they haven’t had any hitting in practice) - "I disagree.  We’ve done a lot of hitting, we just haven’t tackled to the ground.  That would be the only difference in a scrimmage.  In every padded practice, all of our teams drills have been what we would call thud.  Its full speed the only difference is you don’t tackle the back.  From that standpoint, I feel like we’ve banged them.  Pretty typical of what I’ve seen in other training camps.  Some of the tackling things, cutting guys, we don’t cut in practice.  That’s got to get done if we are going to do it in a preseason game.  Our tacklers, our defenders, you practice your tackling at a full speed rate in the preseason games.  That’s what I’m expecting."

Thursday's Link Collection / Camp Sources

• Carlton Mitchell has his best practice yet (National Football Authority, Wolf)
• Browns could be looking for experience linebacker during roster cuts (Plain Dealer, Grossi)
• News, notes, and observations from Browns practice (Akron Beacon Journal, Ulrich)
• Shurmur press conference transcript