CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Browns will be joined by the New York Giants Thursday and Friday for a pair of joint practices before facing each other in a preseason exhibition Sunday in FirstEnergy Stadium.
The practices won’t be quite full-on scrimmages with live tackling, but Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said players will practice at “full speed.”
Stefanski added that unlike in normal games, coaches from the two teams will coordinate. It’s all part of an effort to get their teams prepared for the 2021 season, which begins in three weeks.
“AVP (offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt) will script the offense and give that to their defensive coaches and say, ‘Hey, we are in this personnel on these plays,’ so they can script their defense. You are working together to make sure you get good work,” Stefanski said.
What was involved in lining up a joint practice between the Browns and Giants?
“Joe (Judge, Giants head coach) and I spoke way back in the spring and talked about doing this, and very open at with, ‘What do you need to see? What do we need to see? Here is what we have done.’ Share some schedules together and then modify it with the coaches as the coaches talk to each other,” Stefanski said.
Judge is five months older than Stefanski, and both attended Catholic high schools in the Philadelphia area. Stefanski said he played with Judge’s older brother Jim in high school.
“I know what Joe is about. I know what he believes in. There is that relationship there where we know our two teams and then I think you can get good productive work when you have that,” Stefanski said.
Although Judge’s Giants finished the 2020 season 6-10, the club was one win shy of making the playoffs out of a weak NFC East division.
“To me the trust factor’s huge, which is part of the reason early on me and Kevin talked way back in the offseason about the possibility of doing this and part of it is because of our relationship and our experience together,” Judge said. “That helps because then you can work together.
“When you go into these practices, you want to be with someone that you have a relationship with because then you can work together and make sure, ‘Hey, what do you need to see? What do we need to see? Let’s work together to make sure we all accomplish that.’”
Judge said the two coaching staffs have worked together for weeks to map out the two days of practices.
