Za’Darius Smith, Juan Thornhill have same goal of getting ‘a ring’ with Cleveland Browns

BEREA — Za’Darius Smith has put up numbers in three of the last four seasons to put him in the conversation as a dark-horse NFL Defensive Player of the Year candidate. However, like his new Browns teammate, Myles Garrett, that award had eluded him so far.

Now on the same defensive line at Garrett, the opportunity exists for the two standout pass rushers to help each other put up the kind of numbers that earns those kind of accolades. An accolade that, no doubt, has to be on Smith’s bucket list of accomplishments, right?

“I feel like it is, but my main goal right now is get a (Super Bowl) ring,” Smith said last week. “That’s something that I never have experienced. So that’s the No. 1 goal is help this team win a Super Bowl. Well, first of all, win the (AFC) North, well, win the division, sorry, and then go on and play in the Super Bowl. … Self goals is something that’s going to come once you play part of the team, once you do your job basically.”

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Smith, picked up in a trade with the Minnesota Vikings earlier this month, is one of several offseason acquisitions the Browns have made to help them get back to where they were in 2020 when they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Divisional Round. That was just the second playoff appearance since the franchise was reborn in 1999, and merely the third winning record out of those 24 seasons.

One of the players on that Chiefs team was safety Juan Thornhill. He would reach his second Super Bowl in as many years in the league that season, and win his second Super Bowl championship in four seasons this past February.

A month later, Thornhill would sign a free-agent deal to bring his talents — and his championship rings — to Cleveland.

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“I like to be the underdog a little bit going into the season,” Thornhill said last week. “Not everyone thinking that you’re going to be like the No. 1 team. Kansas City, everybody put them up there, No. 1, they think they’re going to win every year. But me coming here, I feel like I can add something to the team and bring something to the team to get us to that top level and I just will feel accomplished if we did that well.”

Smith and Thornhill have talked openly about being leaders for the Browns despite being two of the newest members of the organization. The former adds three Pro Bowl appearances to a position group anchored by a multi-time All-Pro player in Garrett; the latter may not have either Pro Bowl or All-Pro honors, but has more Super Bowl championships than almost anyone else on the roster.

Both have a certain level of championship pedigree they feel they can impart on their new teammates. While Thornhill has won Super Bowls, Smith has been on division championship teams every year since his last year in Baltimore in 2018, when they won the AFC North.

Since then, Smith has played on four consecutive NFC North championship teams — Packers in 2019-21, Vikings last year. The two years he played full seasons in Green Bay, 2019 and 2020, it reached the NFC Championship Game both times.

It’s why Smith mentioned winning the AFC North almost immediately when talking about goals with the Browns.

“‘Cause that’s where it starts,” Smith said. “I feel like if you set goals, it got to start from there. If you don’t win a division, it’s really not a possibility of going to the Super Bowl. … A lot of guys don’t focus on that, they just talk about the Super Bowl, but the main goal is to win the division first, be on top and hopefully go the playoffs, get a bye and go from there.”

That success would be welcomed by Browns fans like an oasis in the desert. The combined eight division titles won by the Smith and Thornhill alone are three more than the Browns — either the current or former versions of the franchise — have won since 1970, and eight more than have been won since 1989.

None of the newcomers — Smith, Thornhill or anyone else — were part of any of those previous Browns teams. So that history irrelevant to them.

“It’s all good,” Thornhill said. “Like I said, it’s a new start. Whatever happened last year is last year. This is a new year and this is what we’re working for to get to the Super Bowl this season.”

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Za’Darius Smith, Juan Thornhill want Browns ‘No. 1 goal’ to be winning