Welcome to the From the Podium podcast, where we feature all of our daily press conferences rolled into one podcast to help you get ready for the 2025 regular season.

I'm Brock Dannehy, and on today's episode,

you'll hear from Joel Betonio, Denzel Ward, Miles Garrett,

and Kevin Stefanski on day one of practice.

First up is Pro Bull Guard, Joel Betonio,

who previews the Browns quarterback competition ahead of training camp.

So, Joel, after thinking about whether or not you come back to this year, what are your emotions kind of starting training camp over 12? Yeah, I'm excited. I think we're in a good place. The team seems to energize and ready to roll. But personally, I'm excited. I feel really good physically right now. You know, we'll see how it feels in a couple weeks. But right now I feel good and ready to go. Joe, you've been through so many different camps with different coaches. Do you think the personality of this camp for Shepansky will be different in the group is fine? Yeah, we've talked about intensity, we've talked about energy, we've talked about we've got to start fast and we've got to keep building up. We have a couple of joint practices. Those always bring up the intensity. So I think we're going to have a high intensity, you know, physical training camp.

Is there one camp that sticks out that's tougher, more high intensity, or more physical than any It's hard. I think early in my career, you don't know what you don't know, so like my first and second year with Petten. Um, there was a lot more loud. Like you could do half-line still, you could do like inside run, tackling drills and stuff. And so those always felt a little bit more physical than we've kind of progressed to. Just, I think that's more of an NFL-wide thing, though. Since veterans don't play a lot in free season games, how much to do those two joint practice that's helped in terms of getting ready? Yeah, there's a positive to them. I think if you have a good team that you're going against and you get controlled reps, you know, in a controlled environment,

sometimes they get a little out of place, especially if it goes more than a day or two, because, you know, one team wins the first day and the next team comes back angry because they got yelled out the night before.

If you have good practices, it can be very helpful.

Joe, can you guys just write off last year as nothing that right? It's part of that, but I don't think, I think we have to take some accountability. Like we were out there playing games. I know we weren't in a perfect position all the time, but at some point, you know, as a player, I think everybody looked in the mirror and was like, what can I do to be better? Not just, oh, last year, you know, we didn't like the play calls. We didn't like this. It was, you know, you have to, you know, take a step and try and improve yourself a little bit. Do you go into every season, believing that you guys have a legitimate chance to, you know, to make the playoffs and get yourself just, you know, really pumped and hyped up for that type of life. Yeah, I mean, I'm personally forever optimistic.

That's just how I've... and get yourself just really pumped and hyped up for that type of life. Yeah, I mean, I'm personally forever optimistic.

That's just how I've been my whole life.

But I think, honestly, truly every NFL team goes into training camp, you know, knowing they have a chance.

Like, we have a majority of our team back from two years ago when we went 11 and 6 and made the playoffs and made a run.

We do know we have to play better and we have to improve and do some things right.

But I think the mentality of the team and the work we're going to try and do gives us that optimism.

Why do you think expectations are so low for this team nationally?

Because we played very bad last year.

We were, you know, disappointing.

I think everybody was disappointed.

You know, I went 0 and 16, 1 to 15, 3 and 13.

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