Browns Announce Rookie Free Agent Signings

Fifteen rookie free agents sign deals with the team. What happened to the rest? Get the scoop about how has deals, and which players may just be coming to Cleveland with on a tryout basis...

The Browns today officially announced the fifteeen undrafted rookie free agents who they have signed to contracts. Here is the listing, adapted from the reports we've been providing since Sunday evening:

LB	Jermaine Dias	Virginia	Herald-Dispatch.com
CB	Jerrid Gaines	Miami (OH)	Dayton Daily News
S	Justin Harrison	Illinois	Pantagraph.com
QB	Craig Hormann	Columbia	ESPN and the Columbia Official Site
TE	Kolo Kapanui	West Texas A&M	Star Bulletin
CB	Gerard Lawson	Oregon State	Oregon Live
OL	James Lee	South Carolina St	thetandd.com
WR	Lance Leggett	Miami (FL)	TheLedger.com
DE	Chase Ortiz	TCU	Adam Caplan (Scout.com)
CB	Robbie Powell	Purdue	Journal and Chronicle Online
K	Jason Reda	Illinois	Chicago Tribune
DT	Brian Shaeferling	Lindenwood	St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CB	Darnell Terrell	Missouri	Adam Caplan (Scout.com)
RB	Travis Thomas	Notre Dame	Notre Dame Athletics
OL	Eric Young	Tennessee	Goupstate.com

This leaves a decent-sized group of players who were not on today's announcement. As we outlined earlier this week,  there can be a number of reasons why players who appear in the press and in blogs don't show up when the rookie free agent listings come out:

1. The player may only be invited to mini-camp on a tryout basis rather than signed to a contract. After rookie mini-camp, a select few of these players may wind up getting contracts. A number of players from Ohio schools are often in this group. Likewise, some of the "signed" players listed above may be cut right after this weekend's mini-camp.

2. Players reported as signed in the media often don't show up in the press release because of issues identified in their physicals.

3. The report may simply be wrong. As "internet time" speeds up, we've seen a lot of these. It often happens that an agent says a player has a contract when they just have a tryout, or the player later gets an offer from another team they prefer, and go in that direction.

In any event, here are players who fall into one of the above categories which have been reported in the media. Most of these will likely show up this weekend as tryout players.

WR	James Banks	Carson-Newman	Go Vols Extra
RB	DeShawn Baker	South Carolina St.	Times and Democrat
TE	Ben Barkema	Iowa State	Quad Cities Times
WR	Matt Champa*	Dayton	Dayton Daily News
RB	Hugh Charles*	Colorado	Colorado Daily
WR	Brandon Copeland*	Bridgewater	Bridgewater Football
LB	Josh Ferguson	Purdue	jconline.com
DT	Steven Friend	CMU	Morning Sun
WR/CB	Andrew Hawkins *	Toledo	Ed Thompson (Scout.com)
QB	Kevin Hoyng *	Dayton	Dayton Daily News
S	Todd Koenig*	Ohio	The Post (Ohio U)
DT	Kyle Lockett	Urbana	Press of Atlantic City
DE	Xavier Mitchell	Tennessee	Chris Steuber (Scout.com)
LB	Nick Moore	Baylor	KWTX.com
OG	Derrick Morse*	Miami(Oh)	News Press
WR	Chris Schubert *	Oberlin	Elyria Chronicle-Telegram
RB	Austin Scott *	Penn State	MCall.com
WR	Joslin Shaw	Florida State	Tallahassee Democrat
OT	Brian Stamper	Vanderbilt	Nashville City Paper
RB	Tony Temple	Missouri	Kansas City Star
LB	Lenny Trusnik *	Ohio Northern	ONUSports.com
DE	Jeff Van Osrow	Oregon State	The Oregonian
CB	Terrell Vinson	Purdue	jconline.com
P	Ben Woods*	Buffalo	Sharon Herald
CB	Jonathan Zenon	LSU	2theadvocate.com

We've also heard repeatedly that S Greg Hay and LB Eddie Pinigis will be getting an invite to mini-camp, but haven't seen this in a reliable source as of yet.