Cleveland Browns look to local alumni for 2023 season

JP Raineri

Sports Editor

NFL football is back and no, this isn’t a story about the semilocal teams from California. This story takes us to the other side of the country, featuring the Cleveland Browns. Yes, the Cleveland Browns, a team with immediate ties to Southwest Riverside County. The Browns kicked off the 2023 NFL preseason with a 21-16 victory over the New York Jets in last Thursday night’s Hall of Fame Game at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. In that game, three former local standouts from the area were suited up for all the action donning burnt orange and brown.

Sione Takitaki (Heritage High School), Lorenzo Burns (Linfield Christian School), and Demetric Felton Jr. (Great Oak High School) have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming NFL season, which is never guaranteed, even when your name is on the team roster. NFL teams have 53-man rosters, and carry 90 players on practice squads, though every member gets treated the same by coaches, and staff, the goal is to be one of the names on the active list when the opening game pops off in Week One.

Takitaki and Felton Jr. are no strangers to getting cheered on the by Dog Pound (the bleacher section behind the east end zone of Cleveland’s stadium), and Burns, at age 25, has high hopes of getting those cheers soon enough, as he is the most recent signee to hit training camp.

Originally signed by Arizona as an undrafted free agent in 2021, Burns spent time on the Jaguars’ practice squad in 2021 and 2022 and most recently played for the Birmingham Stallions of the USFL, winning back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023. He will wear No. 27 as he competes for a roster spot over the next five weeks with the Browns. According to a recent post from his father, DeChon, who played at USC during his college career, and is the current head football coach at Linfield Christian, he says all the Burns men have worn the same number at one point in their careers. Simeon Burns, a 2017 graduate from Linfield Christian, also played college football, most recently at Chowan University in 2022 as a redshirt senior.

Prior to the NFL, Lorenzo Burns, who graduated from Linfield in 2016, played five collegiate seasons, all at the University of Arizona. The coaching staff redshirted the cornerback during his freshman year, in which he saw action in just two contests due to injury. Burns played in 40 games over the next four seasons, amassing 191 tackles, including eight tackles for loss, 26 pass breakups, nine interceptions and two sacks. This past season Burns had 26 tackles in the USFL.