Browns Officially Announce Shaun Huls, Director of High Performance

Monday, the Cleveland Browns formally announced the hiring of Shaun Huls as their director of high performance in an opportunity to be more forward thinking and innovate in their player development.

The Cleveland Browns have formally hired Shaun Huls to be their director of high performance. He spent the last seven seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles after he was hired by former head coach Chip Kelly in an attempt to innovate their methodology when it came to training and nutrition. In his last season with the Eagles, Huls met Andrew Berry, now the general manager of the Browns and after the Eagles and Huls mutually agreed to part ways, Huls joined the Browns.

"There are a number of areas, whether it's strength and conditioning, nutrition, player loading, neuroscience, where you can push on those areas for a competitive advantage. Shaun, given his background, just has a breadth of expertise in all of those domains. He's a data-driven thinker, really progressive mindset and, most importantly, always has the players' interest first." - Andrew Berry, Browns GM

The Browns have a strength and conditioning staff headed by Larry Jackson. Huls is there to help Jackson and his staff while attacking some other areas that Jackson's staff doesn't deal with in an effort to maximize what the strength and conditioning staff is trying to do for the players while being able to offer his insight on training methods.

A lot of this comes down to being able to monitor athletes and having a sense of control in the offseason. When players leave for the offseason or for the summer vacation between minicamps and training camp, the team have little way of keeping track of what players are doing. 

"Athletes, in general, are more frequently at this point going externally for areas that can give them individualized care in all of these areas. As an organization, we're trying to do the best in those spaces, whether it's a medical space or a high performance space, that ensures our players have world-class care here in Cleveland." - Andrew Berry, Browns GM

 There are players who utilize some innovative training methods and the Browns are hoping to take advantage. If the Browns have some of those methods in house, it saves players the money they'd be spending for private training. 

It also helps the organization in efforts to prevent players from accidentally taking performance enhancing drugs or utilizing training methods that simply aren't in their best interest. The more players stay around Berea, the more camaraderie they can develop with teammates as they try to develop a positive culture and at least theoretically, the less likely they are to get in trouble off the field.