KC Concepcion Camp Update — August 31: Part of the Reason Tillman Is Gone
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Cleveland waived former third-round receiver Cedric Tillman, and Scott Petrak's accounting put the drafting of KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston among the reasons he was the odd man out. Concepcion is on the fifty-three among six receivers, per the team's announcement, but the punt-return job the beat has attached to him is not on the record anywhere.
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Cleveland waived Cedric Tillman on Thursday, and the reason given puts KC Concepcion in the sentence. Scott Petrak at BrownsZone laid out the accounting on the former third-round pick — injuries, inconsistency, a non-guaranteed salary — and wrote that Tillman appeared the odd man out in the receiver room after Concepcion and Boston were drafted in the first two rounds in April. A rookie can collect a lot of camp praise without any of it costing a veteran his job; this week the front office did something, and a beat writer named Concepcion as part of why. That is the strongest institutional signal on this file to date.
The roster followed on Sunday: Concepcion is one of six receivers on the initial 53 — Jerry Jeudy, Isaiah Bond, Concepcion, Denzel Boston, Malachi Corley and Tylan Wallace — per the team's announcement at ClevelandBrowns.com, with Gage Larvadain, Luke Floriea and Kole Wilson all waived the same day. One name on that list carries a question: Bond was on Petrak's Saturday list of non-practicers with a concussion, then on the 53 on Sunday. That is a health situation to be resolved, and we'll leave it as that.
Two things the week did not deliver. Thursday's finale produced no Concepcion touch, target or return in any account we can attribute — Floriea caught the two touchdowns, per Petrak — so the preseason ended without the catch column this file has been waiting on. And the punt-return job, which Nick Pedone at Browns On SI characterized as part of his usage on August twentieth, is confirmed nowhere: no designation appears in the roster announcement or in any coverage this window. It remains a beat characterization, not a settled role.
Back in June we drew one distinction for this rookie: a return job is real weekly usage, a target share is a hope. The usage side of the ledger gained institutional weight this week — a veteran cut, partly in his name — while the hope side got one week older, and the preseason is now out of chances to feed it. More when the games start counting.
_Data via nflverse._
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