Todd Monken is already drawing a hard line against Lamar Jackson in Cleveland. The Browns' new coach said he told Jackson that when the two teams meet, Cleveland will blitz him every third down, a blunt message that turns a former partnership in Baltimore into an immediate rivalry.
Jackson had texted Monken to congratulate him on getting the Browns job, and Monken said he answered, “Then I said, 'go f--- yourself,'” before adding that Jackson laughed. It was the kind of exchange that fits a relationship built in Baltimore and now carried into a division with no room for sentiment.
The timing matters because Monken is no longer speaking as Jackson's offensive coordinator. He was dismissed from John Harbaugh's staff in Baltimore after a season that began with the Ravens looking like the NFL's most productive offense. In 2024, Baltimore led the league with 424.9 yards per game and ranked third in scoring at 30.5 points per contest, then finished 12-5 before losing to the Bills in the Divisional Round in Buffalo.
That collapse gave Monken a front-row seat to how quickly a season can turn. Jackson was sidelined for an extended period in 2025, Tyler Huntley went 2-0 as a starter in his absence, and the Ravens still reached a winner-take-all Week 18 game against the Steelers in Pittsburgh. After Tyler Loop missed the kick that would have won the AFC North crown, Harbaugh and Monken were fired, and Monken later told The Baltimore Sun that life is fickle and that everything has a shelf life.
The new Cleveland job has put him on the other side of the line almost immediately, and Monken did not hide that the line will be physical. He praised Jackson and the work they shared, but the plan he laid out was not to ease into the rivalry. He said the Browns will attack Jackson on third down, which is the sort of pressure point that can force a quarterback into faster decisions and narrower windows, especially against a defense that wants to turn every drive into a problem.
That is the part Cleveland has to answer next: not whether Monken knows Jackson, but how much of what he learned in Baltimore he will use against him. The Browns are already being framed around Monken's approach, and the first real test of that approach will come when Baltimore and the Browns meet and the former collaborators line up on opposite sides of the same snap.
