It's only practice, but Cribbs gets his wish

08.15.2008

Making the Browns roster in 2005 as a rookie free agent?

Pretty cool.

Handling the big switch by making it as a wide receiver/returner after having been a quarterback in college at Kent State?

Even cooler.

Smashing many of the Browns' return records and going to the Pro Bowl?

Too cool to describe.

Yes, Joshua Cribbs is down with all of these major accomplishments, but if the truth be told, what means more to him than anything -- what's cooler, at least in the short term -- didn't happen until Friday's training camp practice.

It came when the Browns reached into their bag of tricks and put Cribbs at quarterback and lined up quarterback Brady Quinn as a flanker to the left. Cribbs took the shotgun snap, retreated and then threw a 50-yard, tight spiral down the right sideline to wide receiver Travis Wilson, who caught it in stride.

It was one of the most impressive throws of camp.

And it didn't come a moment too soon for Cribbs.

"I've been itching -- itching -- to do that for three years, especially to throw a deep pass and not just a slant route or something," Cribbs said.

"I've still got the arm. My mechanics may be gone, but I've still got the arm."

"We kid Cribbs all the time that he was a running quarterback at Kent," Wilson said. "I thought that he was going to throw a bad pass, out of bounds."

He thought wrong, and the whole thing made Browns head coach Romeo Crennel laugh.

"Josh just got lucky," he joked. "But no, really, It was a nice throw.

"He is a former quarterback, and he still has that desire inside of him. We have had to suppress it a lot, but it might come out."

Maybe it will.

Cribbs said Browns offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski "has been making a conscious effort to come up with a lot of plays to get me the ball in a variety of ways. Even if I don't play wide receiver a lot, I don't care because of the amount of other plays that are in the playbook for me.

"If the other teams know this, then they have to practice for it. And the more time they spend practicing against that stuff, the more chance they have of messing up against the regular stuff."

But it was also a big day for him with "the regular stuff" -- that is, at wide receiver. He made a diving catch of a Brady Quinn pass over the middle, made a leaping grab along the sideline from Quinn, and caught a pass from Ken Dorsey on a crossing route.

"You have days when you're on and days when you're off," Cribbs said. "This was an 'on' day for me."

Yeah, cool.

CAMPER OF THE DAY: Running back Jason Wright doesn't have the size, impressive power and overwhelming statistics of Jamal Lewis. Not many do, really, for Lewis is one of the game's best runners. But what Wright brings to the table is that, working out of a much smaller body (he is 5-foot-10 and 215 pounds), he does everything pretty well. He is very smart -- one of the most intelligent players on the team -- and is especially proficient at blitz pickup. Not only does he recognize who he's supposed to block, but he gets him blocked.

PLAYS OF THE DAY: Safety Brodney Pool lit up Lance Leggett after the wide receiver made a reception. ... Derek Anderson's pass to Wilson on a square-out was intercepted by safety Travis Key, who returned it 25 yards for a touchdown. ... Dorsey threw long down the sideline to wide receiver Steve Sanders, who made a leaping catch in front of two defenders. ... Safety Mike Adams delivered two big hits. The first was on Austin Scott as the running back tried to go over right tackle. Adams cracked him so hard that it turned the rookie around. He then rocked Paul Hubbard after the rookie wide receiver hauled in a pass. But the sixth-round draft pick held on to the ball. ... Anderson connected with tight end Kellen Winslow on a crossing route. When cornerback A.J. Davis swiped at the ball, Winslow swiped at him. ... Davis broke up a pass from Dorsey to Leggett. ... Quinn threw to wide receiver Efrem Hill, who bobbled the ball and made the catch after the defender fell down.

FAN-TASTIC: The Browns drew one of their bigger crowds of camp, 2709.

UP NEXT: This is it, the final day of camp. If you want to see the Browns practice this year, you can't put it off any longer. The Browns will work on Saturday from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. The weather forecast looks great, so don't worry about calling the Browns Training Camp Hotline before leaving home to check the status of practice. Just get here, if you want to be here this year.

QUOTABLES: "The schedule is the schedule. We are going to play it. We are going to line up and play. We are going to be competitive and do the best that we can. That is the way you have to look at it. You have to play one game at a time. You can't look down the road because as soon as you start doing that, the guy you play the next time, he beats you. We will play them one at a time and see how it goes. Every year you line up and you face the same deal. You have 16 games that you have to play, plus the preseason. If you are fortunate enough to play more games, you have those to play. All coaches in the NFL have the same task right now, and no one knows what is going to happen. If the Giants had known at the beginning of last season that they were going to be Super Bowl champs, they would have had a different outlook at the beginning of the year. Nobody knows, so you line up and you play the games and you see what happens." -- Crennel on the team's 2008 slate of games.