Cleveland Browns Preview
Edition #223
Good morning!
We’ve officially made it through the week and it’s time to focus our attention on the upcoming trip to Cleveland and a visit to see ‘Brownie the Elf’.
Today we’re going to dedicate the entire newsletter to preparing for the Browns. We’ll take a look back at their opening win against the Carolina Panthers and look ahead to how we may be able to walk out of Cleveland with the “W”.
As always we’ll start with some quick notes and the updated injury report. You may need to click through at the bottom of the email as it may be too big to show in your email client.
As we did yesterday, let’s start today’s quick throws with a little injury update. CJ Uzomah was added to the injury report with a new hamstring injury, otherwise, everyone else was limited. The fact that Whitehead is even practicing in a limited fashion is good news for the Jets.
Quick news on former Jets first-round pick Jamal Adams who was placed on IR with a quadriceps tendon injury suffered on Monday night, the safety is now expected to miss the rest of the season.
Jeff Ulbrich spoke yesterday about the energy that newly promoted Will Parks brings to the team. He said that he was adamant that Parks should be on the sideline against the Ravens, even though he was on the practice squad…that’s quite unusual.
Week One Update
IN SHORT - Cleveland dominated on the ground to the tune of 217 yards with Nick Chubb picking up 141, masking an ineffective passing game with Jacoby Brissett completing 18/34 passes. Defensively Myles Garrett went to work with 2 sacks working against rookie Ikem Ekwonu and the run defense held CMC and the Panthers to just 54 yards on the ground and an overall time of possession of 21:34, in comparison to the 38:26 enjoyed by Cleveland.
Offense
Until Deshaun Watson comes back, and maybe even after he comes back, the Browns are a run-first team. They have an outstanding offensive line and as Brandon Thorn recently commented in a Twitter thread “The Browns ground game remains beautiful to watch. The design, multiplicity, personnel & execution are top-notch” - That’s a perfect summary and I’m a big fan of the word top-notch.
Stopping the run will be key to beating the Browns, as it usually is. If you’re not having to deal with Nick Chubb you have Kareem Hunt and head coach Kevin Stefanski (who calls the plays instead of offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt) isn’t afraid to add some wrinkles into the scheme to keep defenses off-balanced, with receiver Anthony Schwartz getting two carries for 20 yards against the Panthers.
The scheme is by nature very similar to the one that the Jets currently operate with the outside zone being a personal favorite of Stefanski, he obviously didn’t invent it but he uses it heavily, his ideology being that you run first and pass second. Stefanski hired former Jets offensive line coach Bill Callahan, a man renowned as a bit of an offensive line guru and the Browns started adding players to the offensive that would allow them to run the kind of system that Stefanski grew up with. That means athletic offensive linemen, good blocking tight ends, and incredibly talented runners.
Last year the Browns ran the football 485 times, which was the 9th highest amount in the NFL, but the productivity of 5.1 yards per carry was the joint best in the league along with the Indianapolis Colts, who have a pretty good line headed by Nelson and maybe the best running back in football in Jonathan Taylor.
The Brown's offensive line is led by Wyatt Teller at RG and Joel Bitonio at LG, James Hudson plays over at RT, and Jedrick Willis is the starting LT - A player who is dominant in the run game but can be susceptible to the speed rush, Willis allowed 4 pressures on Sunday and was on the hook for 5 sacks last season. As a unit however, they are a dominating presence on the ground and their cohesiveness is perhaps their biggest strength.
When you get a good scheme matched up with good personnel, good things happen. That’s exactly what’s happened with the Cleveland Browns and the running game.
The passing game on the other hand is a little more limited in terms of potential, especially with Watson suspended at the moment. Brissett is a manager, but he does have limited upside, it’s much like the situation we find ourselves in with Joe Flacco.
Brissett entered his 7th year in the league in 2022, having thrown 5 touchdowns to 4 interceptions in Miami last year. 2019 remains his best year:
In week one he completed just 52.9% of his passes for 147 yards and 1 touchdown with Donovan Peoples-Jones his favored receiver with 11 targets, Amari Cooper was second with 6 and Harrison Bryant and Kareen Hunt were joint 3rd with 4 targets each.
The Browns’ game plan is to beat you on the ground, so the Jets’ game plan should be to make Brissett beat them through the air. Brissett has confidence in DPJ because of his ability to win his contested matchups, he had a 69.6% success rate last year and caught all three of his contested catches against Carolina. It’ll be a great test for Sauce Gardner and DJ Reed, who are both coming off a fantastic game against Baltimore.
Brissett only attempted two passes of 20+ yards down the field against Carolina and failed to compete either. Between 10-19 yards he completed 54.5% of his 11 attempts. The Browns have some real talent at receiver, I like DPJ and Amari Cooper is a proven commodity. Anthony Schwartz ran 4.27 in the 40-yard dash, so is always a danger and I’ve always liked David Njoku from the TE spot, as both a receiver and blocker.
The Panthers managed to generate 9 pressures on the Browns QB, but converted just one of those into a sack, 6 of those pressures came from the left side of the line with Jedrick Willis Jr (4) and Joel Bitonio (2) being responsible. Having watched the game, the tackling by Carolina was pitiful, with the team being tagged for 16 missed tackles in total, old Jet Frankie Luvu being the biggest culprit with 4 missed tackles.
Defense
Kevin Stefanski chose Joe Woods as his defensive coordinator in Cleveland. Woods and Saleh were on the same staff in San Francisco in 2019 with Woods acting as the Defensive backs coach & passing game coordinator. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that Wood’s defense is relatively simple in terms of concept with him utilizing three main coverage schemes Cover-1, Cover-3, and match quarters…not too dissimilar to what we see with the Jets.
When Stefanski was first hired, the Browns focused their efforts on fixing the offense. That has slowly shifted to the defense over the last 12 months. Last off-season the Browns signed the likes of Jadeveon Clowney and John Johnson, while also drafting one of my personal favorite prospects in Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah as well as first-round corner Greg Newsome II.
Woods defense may be simple in terms of concept, but it can be highly creative and hard to defend with pressure not only coming off the edge but coming straight up the middle from multiple linebackers. The Browns generated 19 pressures on Baker Mayfield converting 6 of those into sacks.
I just wanted to highlight back-to-back sacks by Myles Garrett who finished the 2021 season with a career-high 18 sacks. Garrett is a phenomenal talent but he was working against a rookie in Ikem Ekwonu who may struggle this year to contain speed rushers off the edge and the hope is that George Fant’s athleticism will help him on Sunday…but at the same time I would be surprised if the Jets left him on an island like the Panthers did with a rookie tackle.
One play later and it was basically a carbon copy, this time they gave Ekwonu help, but it wasn’t very good help and the result was the same. There is speed off the edge, and then there is Garrett speed off the edge.
Like with any young secondary, sometimes mistakes can happen. The Browns started both Martin Emerson (21) and Greg Newsome (22) against the Panthers and while they both played well overall, there was the big touchdown completion to Robby Anderson that seemed to cause some confusion between the corners and safeties.
Baker Mayfield didn’t play well against his former team completing just 57.1% of his passes, but he did complete 4-6 when attempting passes of 10+ yards, so there is an opportunity to beat them through the air considering how stout their run defense can be.
With players like JOK and Anthony Walker in the linebacker unit, the short game can be difficult to convert on, so the Jets will need better protection to let plays develop. It all starts up front and that includes Joe Flacco making better decisions with the football.
Special Teams
In terms of special teams, the Browns are a solid unit, led by kicker Cade York. The rookie out of LSU kicked a 58-yard winning field goal against Carolina on Sunday, his 4th successful field goal of the day. That 58-yarder was the longest game-winning field goal made by a rookie in NFL history, start as you mean to go on young man.
The Browns signed punter Corey Bojorquez this off-season who spent the 2021 season with the Green Bay Packers. Bojorquez was middle of the pack in pretty much every category, nothing special but also relatively reliable in terms of hang time.
2nd year running back Demetric Felton is handling the punt return duties this season with Jerome Ford acting as a kick returner. Cleveland lost return specialist Jakeem Grant to a torn Achilles in camp after signing him to a three-year deal. That was a big blow for the Browns.
Rookies
The Browns traded two picks to the Texans for Watson including their 2022 first-round selection and then traded down with their 2nd round selection as well.
In the end, the Browns ended up making 9 selections in the 2022 NFL draft and here is a very quick rundown of all of them.
3rd round - CB Martin Emerson - Allowed 3 receptions on 4 targets against Carolina, but he managed to keep everything in front of him, allowing just 27 yards.
3rd round - DE Alex Wright - Only appeared in 17 snaps predominantly as a pass rusher (11 snaps), failed to register a pressure on the day but did bat a pass down.
3rd round - WR David Bell - Played 22 snaps but 13 of those came as a run blocker. Failed to register a single target throughout the game.
4th round - DT Perrion Winfrey - Only appeared in 5 snaps on defense throughout the game and did nothing of note.
4th round - K Cade York - Hero from week one hitting that 58-yard game-winner, was perfect on the day with 4 FG and 2 XP.
5th round - RB Jerome Ford - Returned one kickoff for 29 yards but failed to register a carry, did appear on special teams, and registered a tackle however.
6th round - WR Micheal Woods II - Was ruled out of week one with a hamstring injury and illness. He’s missed a fair amount of time towards the end of camp.
7th round - DE Isaiah Thomas - Was inactive against the Panthers.
7th round - C Dawson Deaton - Tore his ACL in the middle of August and was placed on IR, ending his rookie season before it really began.