Daily Dawg Tags: A different feeling to the Cleveland Browns

Spanning the virtual globe to bring you the latest news about the Cleveland Browns and the NFL – these are your Daily Dawg Tags for Thursday, July 21.

Things have been a bit different ever since the Cleveland Cavaliers ended the city’s title drought.

That feeling has extended to the Cleveland Indians, currently the best team in the American League, and to the Cleveland Browns, where cornerback Joe Haden hopes some of that winning magic rubs off on the Browns. To do that, though, Haden needs to be the player he was in 2013 and 2014, not the one who spent most of last season injured.

It also extends to the fans, who are heading into the 2016 season with a different outlook on their favorite team.

Those are just a few of the topics we will look at in today’s edition of the Daily Dawg Tags.

Cleveland Browns:

The season tickets arrived and it feels different

"For more than half a century – before there was FedEx and the mailman delivered them in a brown manilla envelope – I couldn’t wait to tear open the Cleveland Browns season ticket package. When they arrived this week – without a “thank you for your $3,500 including two worthless exhibitions” hat, mug, mini-banner or cheesy Browns lapel pin – there was none of that annual anticipation or anxiety, just routine satisfaction."

Training camp preview: Right guard

"The Cleveland Browns enter training camp with questions at right guard. Will veteran John Greco be able to hold off an up-and-coming rookie challenger?"

The Browns will be better than 3-13 this season

"The Cleveland Browns are in an interesting position heading into the 2016 season. After years of high expectations for sub par teams, the 2016 Browns will begin training camp with perhaps the lowest expectations of any team since 1999. After finishing 3-13 in 2015, the Browns should be able to make some improvements in 2016."

The Browns most overrated player is …

"Cleveland Browns cornerback Joe Haden has made one analyst’s list of the most overrated players in the NFL."

Browns have a short and light roster (DBN)

"The Cleveland Browns are lightweights in more ways than one, apparently. According to Bleeding Green Nation, the Browns have the third shortest and the third lightest roster in the NFL."

NFL News:

10 second-year breakout players (NFL.com)

"NFL players typically make their biggest developmental gains between their first and second seasons. Thus, we can expect to see a handful of young pros go from good to great in their second pro seasons in 2016. Given some time to survey the landscape and project the players with the biggest growth potential, here are 10 second-year pros to watch this fall."

Cowboys rookie Ezekiel Elliott tops NFL jersey sales (ESPN)

"In the past three full months, Ezekiel Elliott has sold more jerseys than any other NFL player. That’s an impressive stat for the current Dallas Cowboys and former Ohio State running back, given that players who were already in the league had a 27-day jump on Elliott, who was drafted fourth on April 28. Elliott’s home and away jerseys were available for preorder later that night."

Tom Brady is innocent (NBC Sports)

"I think Tom Brady is unequivocally, unambiguously, thoroughly and 100-percent innocent of any and all charges of deflating footballs in a cheating capacity. I don’t think he ever asked anyone to illegally deflate footballs. I don’t think he wanted footballs inflated below NFL standards. I think the whole thing — every last page of the testimony, every last leak to the media, every text made public, every curious statistic like the one showing the Patriots fumbled less than other teams and every blunder Brady made along the way, like his awkward press conference and the destruction of his phone — was a bunch of phony-baloney nonsense that was either directly or indirectly inspired by a made-up NFL witch hunt. I think he’s entirely innocent."