Dwayne Bowe traded one receiver-needy team for another when he signed with the Cleveland Browns this offseason. The wideout said he plans to fill the No. 1 role vacated by the suspended Josh Gordon.
"When Josh was here he was the touchdown man and I'm here to fill his shoes,'' Bowe told Northeast Ohio Media Group during minicamp. "It's my job to do that in this offense and I believe I can do that."
Bowe was part of a Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver corps that did not score a single touchdown last season. The 30-year-old pass-catcher said the trouble in K.C. was the lack of red zone targets.
"I didn't get one shot in the end zone,'' he said."I think it's in Ripley's Believe It or Not...
"I got us down in scoring range and with our offense, it was based on running back to the tight end and my job was to play football,'' he added. "I never complained. I always did my job to get us down there but the chips just didn't fall my way. That's all I can control.''
Bowe had 60 receptions for 754 yards in 2014, his third straight year under 1,000 yards. He scored a total of 44 touchdowns during eight seasons in Kansas City, but his 15-score 2010 season seems more an aberration than duplicable.
While his game film showed a receiver struggling to earn separation from cornerbacks, Bowe -- indirectly -- blamed his lack of big plays partially on the Chiefs offense and quarterback Alex Smith. He said he's excited to play with a bigger quarterback, like Josh McCown.
"It's going to be exciting, especially with a new uniform, a new city, new everything, I'm going to feel good," he said. "With Alex Mack and Joe Thomas, we're going to have a lot of time to hit that deep ball even in the red zone. I never had a quarterback like Josh that was that tall and could see the mismatch and really go to it. He's got my confidence level high right now.''
McCown was at his best two years ago in Chicago, tossing passes up to Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall. Bowe might get more deep shots in Cleveland than he did in K.C., but we don't expect him to be anything close to hitting the marks of Jeffery, Marshall or Gordon.
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