“Ten times better (than 2017), 15 times better,” Garrett said with a smile at the team’s golf outing about how much he can improve.

For the record, he was joking about the degree, but Garrett wasn’t joking about expecting a better season. To do that, though, he has to meet the key goal he set for himself after his rookie season: Stay healthy.

“The best quality is availability,” Garrett said during minicamp. “I have to be present.”

It wasn’t Garrett’s fault that he missed five games as a rookie. He hurt his ankle in practice before the opener when a teammate fell on him and caused him to miss four games. He missed the Browns’ trip to London because of a concussion.

But Garrett felt those five missed games plus the time it took to get back to playing shape limited his impact. Even with those, though, he had seven sacks in 11 starts. Projected to a full season, that’s 10 sacks, and a double-digit sack season from a rookie would draw a lot of attention.

But the Browns didn’t draft Garrett first overall a year ago to be very good, and they’ve let Garrett know that.

“I think that is the challenge maybe John was serving up, and it is no different a challenge than if I would go to Myles,” coach Hue Jackson said. “‘You are supposed to be one of the best players in this league. Go be it every week.'”

Jackson agreed that staying healthy is the first key for Garrett, which in some degree involves not overdoing it off the field.

“He is one of the few guys that I have had to coach that I know I am going to have to keep my hand on to hold back,” defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said. “One of the things with him is his overworking. He works so hard because he does not want to be good; he wants to be great.

“Sometimes he can be his own worst enemy in that respect because he works so hard physically that he has to do a good job with recovery also. The next thing is this — and he knows — if he stays healthy, watch out.”

Garrett’s conditioning has become legendary since he joined the Browns. A year ago he ended training camp practices with a series of 100-yard sprints. This offseason when Garrett ran sprints, Williams said he ran with the defensive backs and receivers.

“They were having a hard time keeping up,” Williams said. “How do you do that as a 280-pound man?”

Another measure of Garrett’s growth is in his knowledge of the game. He admitted that it was an adjustment getting used to the speed of the NFL game.

“It is coming a lot easier,” he said.

A year ago at this time Garrett was coming off a few months of training for the draft, which meant training for the 40-yard dash. This offseason he trained for playing football, which meant concentrating on technique and skills.

“I feel like I was just a little slow with my hands and not as good as I wanted to be last year with disengaging with the offensive linemen,” he said. “I think that I have really improved.”

The final factor that the Browns feel will help Garrett: a revamped secondary.

The Browns’ self-scouting from last season showed a secondary that could not play press coverage or run with NFL receivers. Changes were made. Jabrill Peppers was moved from free safety to play closer to the line. Damarious Randall was acquired via trade to play free safety. Denzel Ward was drafted fourth overall to provide press coverage. Three other free-agent corners were signed. Peppers is the lone holdover, and he won’t be in the same position.

In theory this means coverage in the secondary should be better, which means the “almost sacks” that Garrett had a year ago will turn into sacks. The Browns believe Garrett was one step from at least a dozen more sacks, perhaps as many as 15-18.

“Allow the quarterback to hold the ball longer than 2.13 seconds, now watch,” Williams said, evidently referring to how quickly opposing quarterbacks got rid of the ball in 2017.

If that was the Browns’ number, it’s shocking. NextGenStats.com tracks the time individual quarterbacks take to throw. None of the 42 quarterbacks it ranked were faster than 2.42 seconds.

ESPN Stats & Information also keeps track of the time it takes quarterbacks to throw against defensive teams. Quarterbacks on teams playing the Browns got rid of the ball in 2.36 seconds, second fastest in the league, according to ESPN Stats. The NFL average: 2.54.

Gauging this stat could be subjective, though. One site’s measurements could differ from another’s, which could differ from a team’s. Suffice it to say that all the stats reflect opposing receivers getting open without much initial opposition, which limits the time the pass rush can get to the quarterback. If the secondary can maintain coverage another second or two, the pass rush becomes that more effective.

Tommy has always been Justin’s sounding board and source of comfort. When Justin was having second thoughts about attending Penn’s Wharton School — one of the top undergraduate business programs in the country, with an acceptance rate of just 7 percent and students with an average SAT score of 1499 — he went to his older brother.

“I was really scared at first,” said Justin. “He’s a great listener, and I remember sitting there, and I was nervous as heck, and I was like, ‘I think I’m going to go to Penn, but I don’t know.’ I was worried about the school being too hard and if I could do Philly and everything else, and I said, ‘What do you think?'”

“It was probably the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on his face,” Justin said. “To me, it was just reassuring. It seemed like he said, ‘Go for it.’ And I did. It ended up working out great with both football, and I’ll [have graduated] as an Ivy League grad. … I was talking about school being hard and a challenge and he’s looking at me like, ‘Man, you’d be surprised what Watsons can go through. I go through harder things than that just by getting up in the morning.'”

‘Thought everyone had a brother that has special needs’

Justin has also drawn inspiration from his parents, Doug and Terri Watson, who did their best to make life as normal as possible for their four children — Justin, Tommy, Alex, 24, and Abby, 18 — despite Tommy’s condition. They scheduled family vacations around Tommy’s summer camps and got the other three involved in competitive sports.

“I kind of think that growing up, I thought that everyone had a brother that has special needs, or that has someone in their family that needs a little extra care,” Justin said. “I don’t think I fully appreciated how much of a sacrifice it was at first for my parents — their first-born child born with cerebral palsy, and not only the financial stress it puts on you, but just the emotional and mental stress.”

Doug and Terri each had to work two jobs to support Tommy’s medical care. (The CDC estimates the lifetime of medical costs for a person with CP exceeds $1 million.)

Though Tommy would spend about seven hours each day at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, which also caters to medically fragile students, Terri would work for several other families providing child care.

Doug would work during the day at The Bank of New York Mellon in Pittsburgh doing client service management before working nights at a smaller company doing computer security. He’d pick up extra shifts so he could take off when one of his children had a game, or even to coach one of their teams. Terri would have dinner ready for them before they all got home, then head out the door for a few more hours of work.

“She would pack herself Cheerios and wouldn’t even get to eat the dinner she had made after a full day of work,” Justin said, adding that his parents didn’t sleep well for years because they’d worry about Tommy in the middle of the night. He never heard them complain, either.

“My parents would never say, ‘We had to do this because of Tommy’ or, ‘We had to do this or that.’ That’s just what they needed to do,” Justin said. “They needed to work that many hours to make sure we never needed anything and to [make sure] we were more well off than they were. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully appreciate it. But definitely when I got to college and saw, ‘Man, my parents were working 12-hour days for me, I better be putting in at least 12-hour days myself to say thank you to them.”

‘He’s a special young man’

Penn football coach Ray Priore could see that work ethic in Justin. He got the sense Justin was playing for so much more than himself.

“He is a special young man,” said Priore, who had coaches from other sports marvel at Justin’s work habits, wanting to clone him because he’d be the first one out onto the field, 45 minutes early. “He showed up to practice every day as if it was a work day. I think that goes back to a great upbringing — great family life, parents are wonderful people. [They] instilled the values that [he] has, being resilient, and I think that comes from his family background, that resilience and that toughness.

“I’m not sure he had a bad practice in four years or a practice with [less] effort. He’s driven that way. … We always talked about, ‘Success is a choice.’ You can choose to be average or you can choose to be successful. Justin chose to be successful. In everything, he attacks.”

Justin put the betterment of the group before his own needs. He was offered a prestigious internship at Goldman Sachs going into his senior year that would have put him in position to earn six figures right out of college. He turned it down to stay in Philadelphia to work out with his teammates.

He played nearly every skill position on offense aside from Wildcat quarterback. He also attended every special-teams meeting his senior year despite not playing a single snap with the unit, because he felt it was important to know what they were doing at all times.

“I’ve been coaching football for a long time, and I’ve had a lot of real good players that have played, so don’t take this the wrong way, but he’s a young man that really embodied everything as a coach that you say you want to be around,” Priore said. “Whatever it is, he has it.”

What impressed Priore most, though, was the bond Justin developed with a little boy named Vhito DeCapria, who had been stricken with cancer and was adopted by the Quakers football team. Priore saw empathy in Justin’s eyes and a tenderness in his heart.

“It was special to watch this sort of connection between the two,” Priore said. “I think there was definitely a special connection between Justin and Vhito that you sort of [saw] that the twinkle in the eye with it … a very, very special bond.”

Justin understood many of Vhito’s fears, because he lived them with his own family. While Vhito lost all of his hair and went through 40 days of chemo, Tommy had been in and out of the hospital back home.

“He embraced it,” Priore said of Justin. “It’s amazing how many things you can put on a young man’s lap or in his hands — how much can he carry? And he’s had to carry a lot.”

“You can work your way to great things, and you can make a difference, and I know he made a difference in that young man’s life, I’m sure, and in his brother’s life and his family’s life, as well.”

‘The way he’s wired is exactly how you want them’

Justin fits the resilient and committed type of player Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht and coach Dirk Koetter talked about all offseason. In fact, Licht even told the Glazer family, who own the Bucs, that Justin was one of his “favorite sleepers in the draft.”

“The way he’s wired is just exactly how you want them,” said Licht. “He just loves the game. He’s a blue-collar kid who, one of his major inspirations is his older brother, who has cerebral palsy. It’s just a great story.”

“I really like him,” said offensive coordinator Todd Monken. “He’s big, fast, physical, smart. That’s what you’re looking for: a guy that can develop. Moving forward, those kind of guys rarely underachieve when you have that sort of measurable skill set. So, he’s looked really good at the start and what we looked for.”

No matter the distance

Because of Tommy’s condition, travel has been nearly impossible. He wasn’t able to go to any of Justin’s college games, but it never stopped him from supporting his brother’s football career. While the rest of the family traveled to Philadelphia during the draft so they could be with Justin while he studied for exams, Tommy watched it on TV.

“They said that whenever my name got called, when the soldiers read, ‘Justin Watson,’ they said he started laughing and smiling,” Justin said of Tommy. “It’s awesome. Because you’re not sure if he realizes it or not, but they said he had the biggest smile. And my aunt went and drove there right after to see him and she played a couple of videos that were online and she said he was smiling the whole time, so it was cool to hear that.”

There’s a tiny glimmer of hope that if Justin makes the Bucs’ 53-man roster, Tommy might be able to go to the game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Oct. 28, but it’s still more than four hours of driving.

The good news is that NFL games in the NFL are on TV far more than Penn games.

For now, Doug and Terri visit Tommy about three times a week. Tommy has many friends, including a roommate who has CP. He enjoys swimming, which has served as a form of therapy for him for much of his life thanks to a generous donation years ago from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, something Justin has thought about getting involved with now that he’s a pro. Right now, though, it’s one step at a time.

But Crowder is the most proven of the wide receivers, with three consecutive 60-plus catch seasons as he enters his fourth year. There’s a reason Smith smiles when asked about Crowder, a guy he clearly clicked with this spring.

“Super talented,” Smith said. “Such great feel. Such great instincts. Such great vision.”

It’s a mutual admiration, too.

“He knows the game, he knows how to see defenses, see different coverages,” Crowder said. “By him having that experience, he knows how to put the ball in the right place. … You can already see that we can do a lot of great things as a unit.”

Their skills should mesh quite well once the season begins. Crowder has been productive in his first three seasons, with 192 combined receptions and 12 touchdowns.

His best season in the slot was his second year in 2016 when he averaged 13.43 yards per catch — and had seven touchdowns — when aligned in this area, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Only four players with at least 30 receptions from the slot had a better yards per catch that season.

That season, it was quarterback Kirk Cousins’ second year starting, and the Redskins also had proven veterans such as Pierre Garcon and DeSean Jackson outside. That combination freed Crowder. Also, it allowed for different routes, as the average air yards per target on these throws to Crowder was a career-high 8.29.

Another fact worth noting: In the past five years, Smith owns a combined 102.8 quarterback rating when targeting slot receivers. That’s third best in the NFL over that time for quarterbacks who have made at least 30 starts, trailing only Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson. Smith owns the ninth-most completions to slot receivers in that period.

The Redskins hope more of the same follows this season. They have a quarterback patient enough to move the ball underneath in Smith, if that’s what the defense allows.

And it was evident this spring how Crowder can be effective with this offense. The Redskins could clear out areas by aligning him on the same side with Josh Doctson and Paul Richardson, both of whom can make plays down the field. That enables Crowder to work underneath; he’s adept at finding soft spots in zones and has the quickness to better shake man coverage by running across the field to a vacated area.

“That will help out a lot,” Crowder said. “It’s similar to when DJax was here. Paul has that ability to go over the top and the defense has to back up and they have to honor that, and then when [Reed] is back healthy, he’ll definitely open it up for me and other guys as well.”

But what Smith likes can be boiled down to one word: trust.

“He’s so easy to read as a quarterback,” Smith said. “Such great body control, body language. He sees defenses well and it’s hardest to do that in between the hashes. You get so many looks and leverages and you have to handle all those things. He’s decisive and he’s so friendly. He’s always coming back to the ball, always working for you. Those are things you know as a quarterback come crunch time that here’s a guy who will constantly work his tail off to get open. He wants the ball. You love that as a quarterback.”

Crowder’s contract expires after the season, making this a pivotal one for him. But he’s also coming off a year in which he was plagued by hamstring issues. To help, he returned to Duke University this offseason and worked out the way he had when he played for the Blue Devils. He said he focused on his entire body, but he also did more power cleans and hang cleans.

“When I was at Duke, I didn’t have hamstring issues, maybe one or two, so I went back and did more dynamic lifts that I did in college,” he said. “I feel great now … It was frustrating [last year]. When you go out there with a lingering injury, you’re already setting yourself behind.”

“He always gets better because he wants to be a great player,” tight end Vernon Davis said. “He’s a dangerous player. He’s quick, he’s elusive. He can do it all — he can run, catch. He’s one of those players you want on your team.”

McCaffrey remembers everything about that day.

The accident had such a profound impact on the eighth pick of the 2017 draft that it is carrying over onto the football field as he prepares for his second NFL season.

He has made plans to pay for Smoker, who is back home in Cincinnati after two months of rehab in Colorado, and his family to attend Carolina’s Sept. 23 game against the Bengals at Bank of America Stadium.

“You see something like that, you definitely have a better appreciation for life, and you take every moment in and can’t take anything for granted,” McCaffrey said before the Panthers departed for their last break before training camp. “We had a little decompression time after that where we just looked at life, and you realize it can really be gone in a split second, and you have to appreciate every single moment.”

What happened on that hike made such an impression on McCaffrey that he has shared it with running backs coach Jim Skipper and teammates, and he hasn’t hesitated to say it’s the most unusual thing that has happened during an offseason in which he got a new offensive coordinator and is adjusting to a new scheme.

“It does remind you how fickle life can be,” Skipper said. “There ain’t no guarantee of tomorrow.”

Not that McCaffrey has worked any harder this offseason than last because of the accident. According to coaches and teammates throughout his career, McCaffrey always gives maximum effort. But he is practicing with more of a purpose than ever, in part because of the accident and in part because he’s determined to meet expectations from a year ago that he fell short of in terms of being the most dynamic back in his draft class.

The former Stanford star is practicing with more confidence after a full offseason with the team, unlike a year ago, when he missed offseason workouts because of a rule that prohibits a rookie from joining a team before his college semester ends.

“He sees everything clearly,” Skipper said. “He sees the defense. He knows the protections. So all it’s done is elevate his game because he can play quicker.”

‘New team, new me’

Jonathan Stewart set the bar high for McCaffrey early in training camp a year ago.

“He’s pretty unstoppable as far as coming out of the backfield and running routes,” the Pro Bowl running back said. “I can tell you now there’s not going to be anybody in this league that can cover him one-on-one. He’s a special player.”

McCaffrey was special in that he led the Panthers in receptions, with 80 for 651 yards and five touchdowns. But because Stewart remained the featured back and injuries at receiver forced McCaffrey to play a bigger role in the slot, the 5-foot-10, 205-pound back was limited to 435 yards rushing on 117 carries.

“He didn’t have a great year,” Skipper said. “He didn’t have a bad one, either.”

The Panthers expect more out of McCaffrey in 2018. Stewart was released, elevating McCaffrey to the featured back role, even though former Denver standout C.J. Anderson was signed in free agency.

Coach Ron Rivera said there’s no reason McCaffrey can’t reach 200 carries, referring to how new offensive coordinator Norv Turner has used featured backs in the past.

Skipper wouldn’t put a number on McCaffrey’s carries. He also wouldn’t limit the expectations.

“All you want with football is put the ball in the playmakers’ hands,” he said. “So in some kind of way, he’s going to get his touches.”

The confidence he saw in McCaffrey throughout offseason workouts makes Skipper more confident that McCaffrey can be the every-down back he was at Stanford, where in 2015 he broke Barry Sanders’ NCAA single-season record for all-purpose yardage (3,250). Skipper doesn’t see Turner overloading McCaffrey with responsibilities as sometimes happened a year ago.

“When he got here, he was rushing through everything,” said Skipper, reminding again that McCaffrey missed most of organized team activities in 2017. “He never relaxed because everything was boom, boom, boom, boom. It was all new on him.

“Now he can catch his breath. He’s seeing things clearer, he’s playing faster, he’s playing with more confidence. All he has to do is carry it over and have a little more success once we start preseason, and it’ll go from there.”

McCaffrey, in typical fashion, brushed off how he will do with an expanded role.

“Not up to me, man,” he said. “I just show up every day. Everybody on the team wants the ball as much as possible, but that’s football. You should want to compete. We’re here to win football games, so whatever that means, whatever that takes, that’s what we’re going to do.”

McCaffrey also isn’t looking back at his rookie season because he has a new coordinator and a lot of new weapons around him.

“I watched all the film from last year to see what I can improve on,” he said. “I’ve moved on. It’s a new team, new me.”

Great expectations

Smoker has watched most of McCaffrey’s interviews since his accident. He has been impressed by what he has seen and heard.

“I didn’t even know who Christian was before this, so I’ve learned a lot about him,” he said. “He’s somebody with very high integrity, and I look forward to meeting him.”

Smoker remains in physical therapy, but he has come a long way. He has been out of a wheelchair for four weeks and, after several weeks of working with a walker, can get around with a cane now.

He can’t wait until September to walk up to McCaffrey in Charlotte and personally thank him for being so fast to call 911 and help stabilize him after the accident.

The longtime Bengals fan might even pull for the Panthers. He’ll definitely pull for McCaffrey.

“The Bengals haven’t been doing well the last two or three years,” Smoker said with a laugh. “They better shape up, or I might have to start rooting for the Panthers. I’ll for sure be rooting for Christian and anything he does.”