Mary Kay Cabot has posted a story stating that the season ending injury to Browns wide receiver Syndric Steptoe was because of the practice conditions set forth by head coach Eric Mangini.  Steptoe's agent, Jerome Stanley, says that the practice was meant to be a walk-through only because of the rain.

Analysis: Another cause of an injury popping up due to the practice conditions of Mangini, but let's face it.  This is football and the Browns were used to much easier camps under former head coach Romeo Crennel.  Losing Steptoe is not a big loss, as he was likely on the bubble anyways.  At least this way he'll get paid this season on IR, rather than being cut late in August and struggling to find another job across the league.

As another football season approaches, we've decided to combine the two Cleveland Browns blogs on Ohio.com.

That blog can be found here. All of my old content has already been sent to its new home.

My favorite part about training camp is finding the little bits of information that doesn't get heavily reported upon. Here are a few things that stuck out today:

- The team is tackling during training camp, a rarity during Romeo Crennel's time as head coach.

- Left guard Eric Steinbach has added "15 to 20 pounds" of good mass. A silly offseason rumor was that head coach Eric Mangini didn't like Steinbach's light playing weight last season and that Steinbach could be cut because of it. That was highly improbable regardless, but it's nice to see Steinbach will be even stronger this season. It's likely he is left tackle Joe Thomas' backup as well as starting beside him.

- The first team offensive line during today's practice was Thomas, Steinbach, Alex Mack, Floyd Womack and Ryan Tucker.

- Brady Quinn unleashed a pass today that flew 55 yards in the air. Who said he had a weak arm?

- Every time running back James Davis has been mentioned since rookie minicamp, it's been solid praise. It will be interesting to see how he contributes in his first season. What really stood out is that Mangini talked highly of Davis' pass blocking.

- Defensive lineman Shaun Smith is reportedly down to 320 pounds. At times last season he was over 350. The weight drop should help his quickness, a trait greatly lacking among the Browns' defensive ends last season.

- Line from Tony Grossi's report today: (Kamerion) Wimbley seems to be everywhere on the field.

Stuck in the office but in need of up-to-the-minute training camp coverage? Check out the Orange and Brown Report's Twitter feed. Good stuff from Barry and the gang.

Without fail, negative preseason press continues to roll in for the Browns. In ESPN's power rankings, the Browns are 28th out of 32 teams. They list the Chiefs, Raiders, Rams and Lions below the Browns.

Pete Prisco of CBS Sport wasn't so kind. He ranks Cleveland as the 31st best team in the league. Fortunately for Browns fans the Lions exist. They are the only team Prisco has lower.

Of the Browns Prisco says: "Their biggest issue is picking a quarterback. I would pick Brady Quinn, but Eric Mangini said it's an open competition. The Browns will be feisty this season, but they won't win more than four games."

According to several reports, the Browns have come to terms with wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi. The team's second pick in the second round signed a four-year contract, according to Pro Football Talk. The deal is worth a maximum of $3.636 million.

Former Ohio State wide receiver Brian Robiskie is the only rookie the team has yet to sign.

For his career at Georgia, Massaquoi caught 158 passes for 2,282 yards and 16 touchdowns.

Remember the brown pants worn by the Browns against the Giants in preseason last year? Probably not, because they were so hideous you pushed it out of your brain.

In his story Sunday, Tony Grossi of the Plain Dealer intimated that the Browns might be considering the look again.

But rumors have surfaced recently that Mangini intends to surprise everyone by dressing his team in brown pants for every road game this year.

A Browns official could have shot the rumor down. But when it was posed to Neal Gulkis, director of public relations, he responded, "No final determination has been made."

I'm all for the occasional uniform delineation –- love the random orange jerseys — but brown pants were really ugly. The only person I want to see in brown pants is the UPS man, and that's only if he's delivering a package of tasty baked goods. And imagine if they went for brown jerseys and pants? Awful.

Training camp can't get here fast enough, right? I just made a post about fashion.

From Pro Football Weekly:

TE Steve Heiden, who tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee last December expects to be cleared to practice when Browns veterans take the field on July 31, his agent, Jack Wirth, recently told PFW. “He’s made great progress,” Wirth said, noting that Heiden has told him the only limitation he could have in training camp is that he might be limited to one practice a day.

Notes…
Steve Doerschuk of the Canton Repository makes the case for Gary Collins to be in the Hall of Fame. Collins was a star receiver for the great Browns teams of the 1960s.

Chris Steuber of the expansive Scout.com network breaks down the team's top 10 prospects. He classifies a prospect as "a player entering his third-year or under 25 years old." Because of that definition, Joe Thomas is still a prospect.

Quarterback Graham Harrell, whom the Browns invited to mini camp, will play professionally for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. If you remember, Harrell is probably most famous in Cleveland sports history for eliciting this comment from blog reader "Julio Franco":

Forget about Derek Anderson and whatzizname from the Jets. Graham Harrell is the only QB the Browns have who can come close to competing with Quinn for the QB job.

This is an astounding pickup for the Browns. For those who say Harrell was merely a product of the system at Tech, mebbe you should consider implementing the system with the Browns!

Ah, that made me laugh all over again. Good work, fake Julio Franco.

When Browns veterans report to training camp on July 31, expect to see specials team/experimental wide receiver Josh Cribbs in attendance.

Cribbs assured as much while on the air with Mark "Munch" Bishop of WKNR (AM-850) saying "No. 16 will be on the field, proudly." He said contract talks have not been furthered, but he's happy to have a job.

"I don't have the contract I would like, but nonetheless I have it better than others," he said.

Cribbs is in the first half a of a six-year, $6.77 million contract and wants it to be restructured. He's set to make a reasonable $690,000 this season.

Even as he's threatened to ask for a trade and skipped some "voluntary" workouts, he insists he wants to play for the Browns and will continue to work hard.

"I'm going to still play as hard as I can," he said. "I don't know any other way to play. I don't want to go anywhere else, I want to stay in Cleveland. I'm going to do everything I can physically and business-wise to stay in Cleveland because this is where I want to be. If something else happens, I don't think it's on me.

"I can't make every person understand my point of view and a lot of fans just don't understand the nature of football and the contract situations and everything. I'm just going to keep playing and I don't mind any fan express any point of view to me and I will respectfully converse with them. I want to see us win big and be a part of that when it happens. Hopefully that happens this year and I'm on that team."

You can listen to the entire interview here. The interview is about 20 minutes long, but worth the time. Cribbs talks some about his community involvement before getting into the contract situation.

What makes it so interesting is that Cribbs continually talks about wanting to play in Cleveland and being a hard worker. Moments later, though, he says that playing in the NFL was his dream, just not necessarily with the Browns.

He's clearly a conflicted player. It's hard to tell which is more important to him – the money or the opportunity. From the standpoint of a jaded Cleveland fan, it seems a little too much like the former.

Following the news earlier that the team has come to terms with rookie linebacker Kaluka Maiava, it looks like the Browns have signed another draft pick.

Carlos Holmes of the Dayton Daily News is reporting that the team has signed cornerback Don Carey to a four-year deal.

Carey was the team's first of three players selected in the sixth round. A four-year starter at Norfolk State, Carey finished his collegiate career with 179 tackles, 7.5 tackles for loss, 10 interceptions and 35 pass deflections.

Carey impressed Browns head coach Eric Mangini during minicamp in June.

"He's impressive in terms of the questions he asked," Mangini said. "I saw that in the very first meeting I was in, the very first meeting he was in where he asked a question most vets don't ask a month down the road. He caught it right away and asked it. At that point you know he's paying attention and he's very bright."

The Browns' Don Carey should not be confused with the Portage County Don Carey who is growing 7,000 tobacco plants.