Before Browns fullback Danny Vitale could even sit down in the office of Hue Jackson during his exit interview after this past season, the coach told the rookie he was impressed with his performance.
Three days later, Vitale traveled to Tampa, Fla., where he has been training for the past few months, except for a 10-day, bucket-list vacation to New Zealand with his younger brother.
Now Vitale is on the verge of returning to work with the Browns, who will begin their voluntary offseason conditioning program Monday at team headquarters in Berea.
This is the time of year when the upcoming NFL Draft dominates headlines and conversation, but it’s also when veterans flock back to their teams to start preparing in earnest for the fall.
Vitale has lofty goals, but before he can reach them, he must secure a role as the primary fullback of the Browns and do his part to help the franchise emerge from the wreckage of a 1-15 season.
“I’ve been here through the tough season now, and I want to be here when we’re great,” Vitale, the only fullback on the Browns’ roster, said in a recent phone interview with the Beacon Journal. “This is really where I want to be, and I want to succeed. I love the fans in Cleveland and love the city. So it’s on me not to lose the job now.
“I’m not going to look at it that way. I’m going to look at it like I’m trying to get better every single day, and I know I can be a Pro Bowler some day. That’s what I want to be, and this is the right place. So I’m really excited to go into these OTAs, training camp, and prove to everyone what I’m capable of.”
What type of fullback Vitale can become remains to be seen, but he and the Browns have a vision, and Pro Bowler Kyle Juszczyk is essentially the model.
Juszczyk, a Cloverleaf High School graduate, not only established a reputation as a reliable blocker the past three seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, but he also racked up 97 catches for 769 yards and five touchdowns. Then he signed a four-year, $21 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers this offseason.
“I had this discussion with Coach Hue and with [running backs] coach Kirby [Wilson], and I think we all kind of decided I can be that Juszczyk-type guy if I do what I’m capable of doing,” Vitale said. “He’s a guy I’ve looked at since his first year in the league and watched what he’s done, how far he’s come. He’s really exciting to watch, and there’s a reason he was a Pro Bowler and he’s getting paid now. He’s a guy I watch religiously.”
Put another way, Vitale believes he can be “a jack-of-all-trades, but also a bruiser.”
Vitale, 23, played nine games for the Browns last season after they signed him off the practice squad of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who drafted him in the sixth round (No. 197 overall) last year out of Northwestern.
He finished the season with four catches for 27 yards. He should have had a 2-yard touchdown reception on Dec. 11 in a 23-10 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, but he dropped the ball at the 1-yard line without a defender nearby.
“Everybody will always be like, ‘He must have been nervous or scared or something,’” Vitale said of the excruciating drop. “It’s really the exact opposite. I knew I was wide open, knew it was coming right to me and we had called it. So it was more like, ‘Hell, yeah! I’m about to score.’ I just took my eye off it.
“Coach Kirb told me as soon as I came off [the field], ‘That happens to everybody at some point in their career, and yours came now.’ That’s all that matters. So from here on out, you just catch them. I don’t even know if people know I caught like 135 balls in college and played kind of like tight end. So I know I can catch. I’ve always known I have good hands. It was an unfortunate play.”
Vitale had 135 receptions for 1,427 yards and 11 touchdowns in four seasons as a starting H-back for Northwestern. He didn’t have a traditional fullback role until he entered the NFL last year.
The 6-foot-1, 245-pound Vitale gained about five pounds of muscle this offseason in an effort to aid his transition.
“In my exit interviews with my running backs coach, Coach Kirb, we had talked, and he wanted me to put on a little bit more weight just to protect myself a little bit because being a fullback you’re just smashing heads with everybody all the time,” Vitale said. “So I put on a couple more pounds to protect myself, move some [defenders] a little bit more.”
The Browns desperately need to revive their running game, so they bolstered the interior of their offensive line this offseason by signing right guard Kevin Zeitler and center J.C. Tretter. If Vitale has it his way, he and the line will consistently pave a path for running backs Isaiah Crowell and Duke Johnson.
“Last year, we always talked about how we want to run the ball more,” Vitale said. “It’s hard to stick with the run when you get down early. So you’ve got to put yourself in situations where you can run the ball on first and second down, put yourself in those third-and-short situations. Last year, that’s something we didn’t do.
“But looking forward now, I’m really excited about the guys we got in free agency. I can’t wait to work with them. Obviously, throwing the ball is fun. But, at heart, I’m a fullback first. So if we’ve got some guys who can play some smashmouth football and I can learn from them and help them out, then I’m excited.”
Vitale, though, is eager to wash away the taste of 1-15 more than anything. The uphill climb will be underway Monday.
“Everybody would like to say they’d like to just be able to forget and just kind of let it go and flush it and that’s in the past,” Vitale said. “I personally take it as a learning experience. It’s not the one you want to have, but now that you’ve got it under your belt, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to learn from it?”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.