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Cleveland Browns add another HBCU product to its roster

Cleveland Browns add another HBCU product to its roster

Miami Herald5 days ago
The Cleveland Browns have signed cornerback Keenan Isaac, a former Alabama State University standout. His addition continues the team's growing investment in talent from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Isaac becomes the second former Alabama State player currently on the roster, joining wide receiver Kisean Johnson.
Isaac (6-3, 190) is entering his second NFL season. He originally signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an undrafted free agent in 2023. Last season, he appeared in five games with Tampa Bay. In spring 2025, he played for the Houston Roughnecks in the UFL. Isaac brings experience and size to Cleveland's secondary. He will wear No. 38.
The Browns also added wide receiver Chase Cota from Oregon in the same transaction. Cota (6-4, 205) previously spent time with the Lions, Chiefs, and Texans. He'll wear No. 81 as he looks to compete for a roster spot.
Another HBCU representative on the Browns roster is rookie offensive tackle Jason Ivey. Ivey played at North Carolina A&T and stands 6-foot-5, weighing 300 pounds. He wears No. 72 and is entering his first NFL camp.
The Browns also drafted quarterback Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Sanders began his college career at Jackson State, where he earned two SWAC Offensive Player of the Year honors. He later transferred to Colorado. Now, he joins a quarterback group in Cleveland that's drawing national attention.
With Isaac, Johnson, Ivey, and Sanders all on the roster, Cleveland is becoming a notable destination for HBCU-developed talent.
The Browns are also preparing for a joint practice with the Carolina Panthers, scheduled ahead of their upcoming preseason matchup. The joint sessions will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, and are expected to provide valuable reps for young players like Shedeur Sanders, Keenan Isaac, and Jason Ivey.
These practices give coaches a chance to evaluate talent in a competitive but controlled environment. For players battling for roster spots, it's a key opportunity to make a strong impression. The Browns will face the Panthers in preseason action following the joint practices, giving both teams a final tune-up before roster cuts.
The post Cleveland Browns add another HBCU product to its roster appeared first on HBCU Gameday.
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MGK ANNOUNCES THE FIRST-EVER MONSTER ENERGY MGK DAY CELEBRITY SHOOTOUT POWERED BY WEBULL
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MGK ANNOUNCES THE FIRST-EVER MONSTER ENERGY MGK DAY CELEBRITY SHOOTOUT POWERED BY WEBULL

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2025 NFL betting preview: Favorite bets for NFL Coach of the Year
2025 NFL betting preview: Favorite bets for NFL Coach of the Year

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time5 minutes ago

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2025 NFL betting preview: Favorite bets for NFL Coach of the Year

Picking the NFL Coach of the Year isn't actually that hard. Well, at least compared to betting markets involving players. The extensive offerings require evaluation of dozens of players, whose production hinges on usage, play-calling, injuries and other factors. Meanwhile, we can rule out roughly half of the NFL's head coaches — those with no chance of winning the award. Not because they've done anything wrong, but, in many cases, they've done so much right expectations are already too high. What could Andy Reid, Nick Sirianni and John Harbaugh's teams do to make voters believe it was the coach who should get the most credit? Sure enough, that answer is so convoluted with hypotheticals that the three favorites to win Super Bowl LX are lined up at the bottom of the oddsboard for Coach of the Year. What does it take to win? The key word is expectations — the X-factor built into the calculus for this betting market. The winner needs to overcome some negative elements on the way to team success, while not being overshadowed by the outstanding play of one of his players. Example: Quarterback Jayden Daniels' excellence last season took away just enough credit from the job Dan Quinn did in his first season with Washington. Here are my favorite bets for NFL Coach of the Year at BetMGM: Pete Carroll, Las Vegas Raiders (15-1) The betting market is already aware of the hurdles that many teams face, giving their head coach the inside track at exceeding expectations. Unsurprisingly, new coaches like Ben Johnson, Mike Vrabel, Liam Coen and Aaron Glenn are the top choices in the market, since the reason they are first-year coaches is because things went so badly last season that the predecessors were fired. 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Dave Canales, Carolina Panthers (16-1) Kevin O'Connell was a predictable winner last season because he was an offensive coach with a playoff team who just needed to guide Sam Darnold into enough production to replace Kirk Cousins. It was a prime case of providing voters an answer to the question, 'What did you do?' when evaluating each candidate's coaching job. Like looking at last year's record, it's human nature for voters to factor in work that might have begun before this season. Canales got hired by the Panthers in 2024 because of his work with Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay, and we've already seen some development in Bryce Young, as the 2023 No. 1 pick accounted for 20 touchdowns to just five interceptions after being benched early last season. The narrative might be that Canales is 'coaching up' Young — a player talented enough to also have won a Heisman Trophy. While the NFC is just as competitive as the AFC in regard to its seven playoff spots, the way to sneak into the postseason as a dark horse may come from winning the NFC South. Instead of backing Carolina to steal the division at around 4-to-1, if Canales gets even more out of Young, and the Panthers skip past the Falcons and Buccaneers, he'll be hard to beat for Coach of the Year. Even if it's close, with Canales' 14-to-1 odds providing a much better payout, that's enough to make it an avenue worth taking. Kyle Shanahan, San Francisco 49ers (20-1) The other way to win Coach of the Year is to make the leap from pretender to contender, while posting an outstanding record. For many years during his tenure, Shanahan's success came with the caveat that he had a loaded roster on both sides of the ball, and, as a result, he didn't win the award. 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Fantasy Football: Everything you need to know about the RB Dead Zone for 2025
Fantasy Football: Everything you need to know about the RB Dead Zone for 2025

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Fantasy Football: Everything you need to know about the RB Dead Zone for 2025

The "Running Back Dead Zone" has been a popular phrase in the fantasy football community for over five years. The term refers to a range in your fantasy draft, roughly in the third to sixth rounds, that has historically been populated by low-upside running backs who've rarely worked out. Typically, these dead zone running backs had a few shared characteristics: they were stuck on bad offenses, relied on volume alone for fantasy production and had underrated backfield competition that challenged their role as the starter during the season. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] If we look at Yahoo's ADP this year, though, a clear dead zone tier with guys who fit the above description doesn't immediately jump out. In this article, I'll sort through running back ADP to see if a dead zone even exists in drafts for 2025, and specific players to avoid. The 'Alive Zone' I mentioned that the standard running back dead zone definition encapsulates the third to sixth rounds of drafts. Recently, some infamous dead-zone failures in that range have been Mike Davis in 2021, Alexander Mattison in 2023 and Zamir White in 2024, all of whom were drafted in the top 60 but posted well under 4.0 yards per carry and ended up being plodders on some of the league's worst offenses. With that being said, if we look at the 30th-60th overall range of drafts this year, none of the running backs really fit the profile of Davis, Mattison, White and the other RB dead zone busts. Player Yahoo ADP Breece Hall 37 Chuba Hubbard 41.1 Kenneth Walker III 43.4 Alvin Kamara 43.9 Omarion Hampton 46..4 James Conner 47.8 David Montgomery 51.3 Joe Mixon 51.7 Running through these names, I do not really see any glaring red flags. Kamara is on the worst offense of the lot in New Orleans, but provides so much value as a pass-catcher that his offensive situation has hardly impacted his fantasy floor. Just last year, Kamara was the RB6 in fantasy points per game despite the Saints offense ranking 22nd in offensive EPA per play. Similarly, Hubbard put together a very respectable RB12 finish last season while playing on the 25th-ranked Panthers offense that is bound to improve in 2025. While the Jets' offensive outlook isn't great this year, they should be one of the more run-heavy teams in the league this year with Justin Fields under center and an elite offensive line. Hall's floor is also boosted by his pass-catching ability, and we saw him finish as the RB5 back in 2023 on a poor Jets offense. Walker and Conner are in similar boats as players on average offenses with potential volume competition from Zach Charbonnet and Trey Benson, respectively. Both Walker and Conner, when healthy, have proven that they can be reliable fantasy assets, though, so I struggle to actively avoid them in the fourth or fifth round of my draft. Walker specifically should benefit greatly from new Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak's zone-blocking run scheme, and the Seahawks made substantial improvements to their offensive line as well. I am a big fan of Walker this year in the fourth round of drafts, and I think he has a much higher ceiling than the receivers going in this range (Garrett Wilson and/or DK Metcalf). Hampton and Montgomery are unique cases that definitely do not fit the bill of a dead zone back. Hampton is a rookie first-round pick on a solid offense who should continue to leap up draft boards, and while Montgomery is the No. 2 back in the Lions offense, he has proven to be an impact fantasy contributor from that role for two straight years. I am avoiding Mixon right now in drafts, but more so due to his injury uncertainty than his situation. If I had to pick one of these players to disappoint, I would lean towards Hubbard, as he doesn't offer the pass-catching floor of Kamara or Hall and still may be stuck in a bottom-10 offense. The Panthers also signed Rico Dowdle in the offseason as backfield competition and he had a productive year himself as the RB1 in Dallas last season. But that is more of a specific issue with Hubbard than a larger problem among this tier of running backs. Has the Dead Zone Moved Down? Even if we look at the next 30 picks of the draft (picks 60-90), the seven running backs going in that range feel fairly priced. Player Yahoo ADP RJ Harvey 65.3 Tony Pollard 65.8 Isiah Pacheco 66.1 Kaleb Johnson 68.1 Aaron Jones Sr. 72.5 D'Andre Swift 72.9 TreVeyon Henderson 80.4 Brian Robinson Jr. 88.1 It stands out that there are three rookies going in this range: Harvey, Johnson and Henderson. I think this is reflective of the fantasy community generally getting smarter with their running back decision-making. Instead of spending an eighth-round pick on a capped-ceiling dead zone back, there is a lot more value in taking a chance on a rookie with league-winning upside, like Bucky Irving last year. All three of these rookies might not enter the season as the starter, but could provide massive upside during the second half of the year and are better value picks as a result. In prior years, I would imagine that the technical Day 1 starters on these teams would be drafted in this range, like Jaylen Warren, J.K. Dobbins and Rhamondre Stevenson. The fact that they aren't is a sign that drafters have gotten sharper. Pacheco, Robinson, Jones and Swift all fall into similar tiers for me as lower usage RB1s on good offenses. They have lower floors than the tier above due to a lack of guaranteed volume, but some of that will be offset by increased touchdown upside. Since none of these four are the most talented runners out there, I do think it's worth keeping an eye on their backups, like Jacory Croskey-Merritt in Washington and Kyle Monangai in Chicago. It's a long shot that these guys end up being fantasy contributors, but they have a smaller uphill battle than other backups if they flash to start the season. Generally, I probably will not be actively targeting this tier in drafts because I am a big fan of the wide receivers going in this range — players like Tetaiora McMillan, George Pickens, Jakobi Meyers and Jayden Reed. But, I would not fault you for drafting one of these safer running backs instead. That leaves Pollard, whom I would say is the lone traditional dead zone running back in drafts this year. Pollard is by no means a bad player, but he has lost a step since his Dallas days and has limited touchdown potential in the Titans offense. Furthermore, he faces competition from Tyjae Spears, who had a down season in an injury-riddled 2024 but was rather efficient both on the ground and through the air in 2023. Unless QB Cam Ward has an amazing rookie season, I think Pollard may struggle to return on his RB24 ADP. Final Thoughts This year's drafts do not feature the classic traps that once defined the running back dead zone. The backs in the 30-60 range all have strong profiles, with a mix of pass-catching upside, secure roles and competent offenses. Even the tier after that is sharper than years past, with the draft board favoring high-upside rookies and veterans in productive situations. If there is one player who comes close to fitting the old dead zone mold, it is Pollard, given his declining efficiency, lower touchdown ceiling and potential backfield competition. Beyond that, it feels like the dead zone is more of a cautionary tale from the past than a concrete rule in 2025.

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