Three New Bodies, One Unanswered Question: Can Cleveland's Defensive Line Hold Without Maliek Collins?

The Browns' interior defensive line problem is not complicated to describe. In 2025, one defensive tackle—Maliek Collins—absorbed essentially everything the position demanded. No meaningful rotation partner emerged behind him. When his knee gave out, there was no viable fallback. That is not a depth chart; that is a single point of failure wearing a jersey, and it defined Cleveland's defensive vulnerability more clearly than any other roster flaw heading into this offseason.

Andrew Berry understood the stakes. The front office's response has been swift and layered: Travis Bell arrived first, then defensive end Jared Verse—ranked 35th on the NFL's Top 100 by his own peers, which is the league telling you something worth hearing—and then Patrick Jenkins signed on August 7 to continue filling the interior rotation. Three additions in roughly a week at a position that had none. The urgency is not subtle. Neither is the logic: if Collins misses significant time in 2026, this team cannot afford to run the same single-man experiment it ran in 2025 and expect a different result.

Here is the narrow path to the good outcome. Verse anchors the edge and creates enough disruption that opposing offenses cannot simply ignore the interior. Bell and Jenkins compete for meaningful snaps at defensive tackle, with one of them establishing himself as a legitimate rotation piece rather than emergency depth. Collins, when his knee allows it, returns as the true anchor—not the only anchor. That is the scenario where the overhaul works: Verse elevates the room, the interior additions buy time, and Collins returns to a situation where he is the best option rather than the only option.

What breaks that path is obvious and worth naming directly. Verse is a pass rusher by trade, not an interior space-eater. His peer ranking tells you he can win on the edge; it does not tell you he solves the problem of a guard-to-guard running lane. Bell and Jenkins are unproven at this level—both arrived as free agents without the kind of track record that makes you sleep soundly in August. If neither establishes himself in camp, and if Collins's knee does not cooperate with any reasonable timeline, Cleveland is back to the same structural problem with different names attached to it. The Clowney miss stings in this context. He was the kind of established veteran who might have provided immediate credibility at the position; instead, he returned to Houston, and the Browns are betting on younger, less certain options.

The larger issue is that the defensive line overhaul exists within a roster that still carries thin depth at cornerback, linebacker, and receiver. Quincy Williams at linebacker faces the same dynamic Collins faced at defensive tackle—one meaningful player, no viable rotation behind him. Denzel Ward's extension secures the secondary's best piece, but the depth behind him remains untested. Berry has addressed the most acute fires, but this is a roster that cannot afford a second wave of injuries at any of these positions. The defensive line additions are necessary; whether they are sufficient is a question training camp will begin to answer, and the answer matters enormously for a team that went 5-12 last season and cannot afford another year of structural collapse.