Browns LB Brandon Magee is Playing Baseball

The Cleveland Browns officially opened their headquarters on Monday for players who were ready to get back to football workouts. One of the players who will be skipping the voluntary workouts, for now, is linebacker Brandon Magee, who contributed mostly on special teams as a rookie in 2013. Why? Because he is taking advantage of the opportunity to be a multi-sport athlete, as he pursues an opportunity in Major League Baseball.

In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal, Magee describes how he approached head coach Mike Pettine earlier this year about the possibility of participating in extended spring training with the Boston Red Sox, the team that drafted him in 2012, and Pettine told him to go for it:

"He thought it was awesome," Magee said. "It kind of surprised me coming from an NFL coach, but he was fully supportive of what I was doing. It felt great because growing up, you have a lot of people that say don’t do this, don’t do that. To have a new coach who hardly even knows me say, ‘Congratulations on playing in the NFL and playing pro baseball, that’s a huge accomplishment,’ that was huge for me."

Magee told the ABJ that he is hoping to be assigned to one of the team's Single-A affiliates, but if not, he will be ready to report to the Browns' first minicamp on April 29.