3 players Cleveland Browns should have retained for 2021

Cleveland Browns former player No. 3 – Larry Ogunjobi, defensive tackle

One player, I was not sad to see go at the time, but I do think the Browns miss is defensive tackle, Larry Ogunjobi. He was a guy that was very inconsistent but had far more production than what the four defensive tackles have given us this year.

Ogunjobi was the Browns third-round pick in 2017 and was one of the few players to live out his entire rookie contract with the team. In 2018 and 2019 Ogunjobi was able to rack up 5.5 sacks and 50 plus tackles, but he wasn’t nearly as effective in 2020.

Ogunjobi only had 2.5 sacks last year and was more and more out of place in defensive sets. He constantly messed up his gap integrity, which led to a lot of big chunk runs up the middle. Of course, much of this was the fault of Cleveland since they played him at the 1-tech despite him being a prototypical 3-tech.

Now back at his normal spot, he has stepped up his game again with the Bengals, and I’m wondering if the scheme changes last season messed with him more than anything. Through 12 games Ogunjobi already has 4.5 sacks and 37 tackles to go along with nine quarterback hits.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but I’d much prefer a guy like Ogunjobi to Malik McDowell now. McDowell either makes a play behind the line of scrimmage (few and far between), or he gets upfield and takes himself out of the play.

Ogunjobi had some of the same bad tendencies but on a far lesser scale.