The 1-3 Cleveland Browns have sputtered offensively. They’ve been up and down defensively. They’ve had chances to steal each of their last two games in the fourth quarter, but the offense failed to score in both cases. A season of high expectations has begun as one of low offensive output, and one of high stress with road games at Washington and Philadelphia directly ahead.
With four games in the books, the Browns have issues to address. Though “issues” don’t necessarily mean the season is sunk, they are plentiful. The Browns have had too many penalties, missed tackles and failures at the end of halves and games.
How do we quantify some of those issues? Which ones seem either fixable or less pressing? Let’s explore what’s happened in the first four weeks.
Low output
A deep dive into advanced stats can sometimes reveal which way a unit might be trending at this still-early stage of the season. But here, it starts with the most basic — and most important — of stats. The Browns have struggled to score.
They have yet to reach 20 points in a game. The offense has scored 58 total points. The defense got on the board with a safety in Jacksonville and a fumble return touchdown last week in Las Vegas.
The Browns jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first quarter against the Raiders, but the offense did not score again. Cleveland has scored on its first possession in all four games — a field goal versus Dallas, touchdowns in each game since — but the offense has gone stale from there. Past the game’s first drive, the offense has 34 points.
The Browns have struggled to establish any consistency on the ground. That’s probably contributed to their pass protection issues — more on those later — and an overall lack of offensive rhythm. Dropped passes have been a problem, too. Pro Football Focus has the Browns at 11 drops, the second most of any team.
Last week, what would have been a go-ahead 82-yard touchdown pass from Deshaun Watson to Amari Cooper was negated by a holding call on backup center Nick Harris. Earlier, Cooper had dropped one of Watson’s best throws of the season, and the ball went off Cooper’s body and into the hands of Raiders safety Tre’von Moehrig. Those weren’t the only miscues, as the Browns passed on a makable field goal try late in the first half and got inside the Raiders’ 10-yard line in the final two minutes before failing to convert.
“The self-inflicted mistakes are what’s keeping us from being as explosive as we can be on offense,” Watson said.
Creating those explosive plays has been a problem. With the negated 82-yarder as the most painful example of what could have been, Cleveland’s longest pass play of the season is 30 yards. Across the league, 23 teams have a pass play of at least 50 yards.
On the season’s second-longest pass play, a 29-yarder to David Njoku in the opener, the tight end suffered a high ankle sprain. He hasn’t played since.
Offensive line mess
The Browns have had to shuffle their line both during the practice week and in all four games. Starting left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. has played in only one game, and Pro Bowl guard Wyatt Teller is out for at least the next three games.
Watson has too often been under pressure. Per PFF, the Browns are allowing an opponent pressure rate of 43.2, which is third worst in the league. Opponents have blitzed the Browns on 33.9 percent of Watson’s dropbacks, the fifth most in the league. The blitzes will keep coming until Cleveland stops them.
The Browns allowed eight sacks against the New York Giants. Their 19 sacks allowed through four weeks is the most of any team, and the sack Watson took to end the game in Las Vegas underscores that the team has put itself in too many must-pass situations. The Browns are fourth in the league in pass attempts (148) but 29th in passing yards (606).
James Hudson III, who’s started three games at left tackle and also subbed at right tackle, has not been graded by PFF as giving up a sack. But Hudson ranks as the worst left tackle (minimum 60 pass block snaps) in terms of pressure percentage with a 10.3 percent rate allowed. He’s also given up a league-high 14 pressures and eight quarterback hits.
“We can be better (in protection), but I think you saw when Deshaun had time — there were really some moments (in Las Vegas) that he had a lot of time and then was able to find people down the field, find openings,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said. “I thought Deshaun did a nice job of moving forward in the pocket, making plays with his feet. So certainly better, but we’re always looking to improve.”
Turning it around?
For as poorly as they played in stretches versus the Giants and Raiders, they had chances to win. In eight fourth-quarter possessions over those two games, the Browns scored just once.
Yes, they have to clean up the penalties and the blocking (and the penalties incurred while blocking). But if they would just find a way to avoid late-game misses and mistakes, they’d be in a better position.
Even with all the missed opportunities, the Browns likely would have gone to overtime in Las Vegas if Dustin Hopkins hadn’t missed a point-after attempt following the fourth-quarter defensive touchdown. That forced Cleveland to need a touchdown, and its last set of downs included a botched snap, a pass batted at the line and Watson taking a sack on fourth.
“If we capitalize on that fourth-down play and we score, we wouldn’t be having these conversations,” Watson said.
Though Watson ranks 28th among quarterbacks in expected points added (EPA) per play, he probably has had two of his best throwing games of his three years in Cleveland in the last two weeks. A combination of drops, penalties and late-game failures have kept the Browns from winning, but can they turn things around? How can they finally crack 20 points? How can they sustain their early-game success?
Njoku will be back this week or next, and he’s a big part of the passing game. Running back Nick Chubb will return at some point in October with an eye on being ready for a full workload in the second half of the season. We don’t know the status of Wills and veteran tackle Jack Conklin, but both remain on the active roster. Though center Ethan Pocic is dealing with an ankle injury, he still might play this weekend.
The next opponent, Washington, is riding a three-game winning streak thanks to the hot hand of rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. The Commanders went on a streak of scoring on 16 consecutive possessions from Weeks 2 through 4. The Browns have struggled to get to 16 points in a game, but the Washington defense ranks last in the league in EPA per play and opponent third-down conversion rate at 54.8 percent.
The Browns’ offense is last in the NFL with a third-down conversion rate of 20.8 percent. They have to be better at extending drives, and not just in the fourth quarter.
Get ’em down
The defense overall has been OK. It ranks 11th in total yards allowed, tied for 17th in points allowed and was good enough in the second halves of the last three games for the team to have a chance to win. PFF has Myles Garrett at third in pressure rate among qualified players, and he has four sacks despite playing through multiple injuries.
But outside of Week 2 in Jacksonville, the defense hasn’t been the dominant force it was for much of last season. There’s a clear blueprint for opposing offenses to use misdirection in the pass game to attack favorable matchups against man coverage, and teams are also having success using end around-type runs to exploit the Browns’ aggressiveness. Last week, the Raiders became the first team to have two different wide receivers score a rushing touchdown in the same game since 2010.
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Something that’s shown up in the Browns allowing long drives and big plays has been poor tackling. Opponents are getting their playmakers in space, and those players are finding more space by avoiding tackles.
“(When) you don’t tackle well, your defense isn’t going to look very good, and we were probably about twice the rate of missed tackles that we normally are in a game (versus the Giants),” Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz said last week. “It’s the NFL, you’re not going to make every single one. But our rate was too high, particularly in some critical situations, and I think that had a lot to do with where that game was before we were able to right ourselves.”
PFF grades the Browns as the No. 30 tackling team through the season’s first month with a grade of 36.8. Only five teams have a grade under 40. Per PFF’s grading, nine different Browns players missed tackles against the Giants and eight had missed tackles in Las Vegas.
Garrett has nine quarterback hurries, per PFF, but he’s the only one of the Browns’ four primary pass rushers who has more than two. Alex Wright made the game-sealing sack for a safety in Jacksonville, but Cleveland overall has not consistently been in the opposing backfield. The Browns brought back three veteran defensive tackles and added Quinton Jefferson for his pass rush ability, but Jefferson’s PFF pass rush win rate is just 3.2 percent.
(Top photo of Amari Cooper: Brooke Sutton / Associated Press)
