The Opening Drive 8/7: Browns Offense Still Sorting Out Personnel Preferences
The single biggest data point to Todd Monken's recent success remains the key question for the Browns 2026 offense.
Todd Monken has never hidden his affection for extra bodies in the backfield and extra tight ends split wide. At Georgia, his 2020-22 offenses ran 12 personnel — one back, two tight ends, two receivers — on 59 percent of their snaps, a rate that trailed only two other FBS programs in the country. That wasn’t a product of necessity; it was a product of having Brock Bowers and a stable of blockers who could also catch. When Monken got to Baltimore in 2023, the personnel command center shifted year to year, but the two-tight-end instinct never left. By 2025, Baltimore ran 12 personnel on 35.9 percent of its snaps — third-most in the league — while running 11 personnel at a rate of just 29.9 percent, the lowest mark in the NFL. Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely lined up together often enough that opposing coordinators had to plan around the possibility of two in-line receiving threats on any given down — and that doesn’t even include the usage of effective blockers Charlie Kolar and fullback hybrid Patrick Ricard. Zay Flowers quietly built the bulk of his production out of those same heavy sets rather than wide receiver dense formations.
So the assumption walking into Cleveland is simple: Monken arrives with two years of Andrews-Likely-Kolar-Ricard tape and a Georgia résumé built on multiple-tight-end math, and the Browns — fresh off nearly leading the league in 12 personnel usage themselves last season with David Njoku and a breakout rookie in Harold Fannin — simply keep the machine running. Except that’s not quite what the roster in front of him says.
Njoku is gone. The Browns spent two of their first 40 picks on wide receivers in Concepcion and Boston, stacking a room that now runs six or seven deep with Jeudy, Bond, Wallace, and even Tillman mixed in. Fannin is, as of this camp, the only tight end guaranteed a contributing role. Joe Royer continues to miss camp and Carsen Ryan is being used more in the hybrid fullback role than true tight end. Blake Whiteheart, Brendan Bates, new addition Jack Stoll fight for the remaining jobs and opportunity. That’s not the tight end room depth you build if the plan is to replicate a Baltimore offense that leaned on three legitimate receiving tight ends. It’s the room you build if you intend to spread the field with 11 personnel and let a deeper receiver corps create the same mismatches Andrews and Likely used to create from a different alignment.
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