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j/c:

CLE-PHI GRADES: CARSON WENTZ STARS IN NFL DEBUT

Cleveland Browns

Quarterback grade: Robert Griffin III, 41.7

Erratic start for RG III

In exchange for stockpiling resources at other positions, the Browns were committed to rolling with a re-tread at quarterback. The Hue Jackson-RGIII partnership could still flourish, but the first test proved a failure. Two long completions aside – both more to do with receivers at the catch point than RGIII’s location – the Browns struggled to move the football. Even discounting the four dropped passes and a throwaway, Cleveland’s new quarterback was accurate on just 12 of 21 attempts. He failed to notice an Eagles’ linebacker lurking underneath on a crucial red-zone turnover, with the Browns down just a field goal. Jordan Hicks diverted the flight, and Rodney McLeod sealed the takeaway with a diving grab. Cleveland, and RGIII, never recovered.

Top offensive grades:

LG Joel Bitonio – 81.1
RG John Greco – 77.0
LT Joe Thomas – 76.3
WR Terrelle Pryor – 75.5
HB Isaiah Crowell – 72.9

Veteran lineman run the show

Although not quite at his usual elite level, Joe Thomas still stoodout as one of the Browns’ top performers. He loves to get his hands dirty in the run game, earning a 78.8 grade in that facet of play. Thomas did give up a rare sack to Connor Barwin, but emerged from the rest of the game largely unscathed. Additional physicality is provided from the interior by guards John Greco and Joel Bitonio. Each also earned a grade of 78 during their run blocking assignments, generating vertical movement at the line of scrimmage. Together, they could form the backbone of an outstanding.

Top defensive grades:

Chris Kirksey – 83.2
Demario Davis – 78.9
Jordan Poyer – 76.4
Joe Haden – 75.9
Danny Shelton – 72.7

Interior should be improved

New pair of inside linebackers Demario Davis and Chris Kirksey made a strong start to their career as a tandem. They were both aggressive attacking the line of scrimmage, nullifying any potential yardage after contact. The pair finished with four stops apiece, limiting the Eagles’ run game considerably. In coverage, they allowed only four catches from six targets for 24 yards. The apparent improvement of Danny Shelton is also encouraging. He was highly disruptive in his 42 snaps, even if he wasn’t always able to finish plays. As well as the new haul of rookies, the development of draftees from previous season will also be key.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-football-cle-phi-grades-carson-wentz-stars-nfl-debut/

A few things surprised me viewing these grades, but overall I think they're pretty fair.

1. Poyer- I thought he had a bad game and was shocked to see him get this grade.

2. Greco, too- Not to put the blame solely on him, but I thought the entire right side of the line was inconsistent.

3. ILB Grades- I agree with PFF on saying the group had a nice game. Not so much surprised at Kirksey's grade as I am Davis'. But I though both played well.

End of the day we are so far away from the playoff teams in the NFL , nowhere close tp PItt, Balt, Cimm, tank rinse repeat

so according to this, our OL played well

Haven't read anyone else's thoughts yet, wanted to put mine out there "untainted."

I am sure there will be a bunch of Mike Greenberg knee jerk overreactions at Wentz's game. I am not taking anything away from his performance, but I think he should have to face at least one top-28 caliber defense before we can anoint him.

Wentz looked good. Definitely did enough to win. Playing him now was a good move as we are the NFL equivalent of the 1-AA teams he faced in college (I forget which is FBS and which is FCS so I stick with Div 1 and 1-AA). He may turn out to be a legitimate NFL QB, not saying he won't.

There will be talks about how we screwed up by not taking him. Maybe that is the case, but too soon to tell. Remember, out of all of the disadvantages to being a Cleveland QB, one major one is not getting to face the Cleveland defense in a meaningful game.

After Cam Erving's snap safety, I stopped watching. I had things to do so I went and did them. We were down 5 and I figured that was it. Saw the final score and I was right. RG3's final stats were pretty close to his stats at the 15-10 mark. What happened?

As to Erving ... last year some of us were mentioning him looking soft, weak and out of shape. The believers all said this was because he was out of position. I did not see how changing positions could make one seem more in shape and less soft. I was wrong. He is a lot stronger as a center. That snap had some cheese to it. I stand corrected.

I saw Barnidge drop two right in the hands.

I see the makings of another Horton defense. Can't stop the 3rd down, no matter the distance. I saw poor tackling, poor coverage.

I was surprised to see we held Matthews to under 4 yards a carry. Did he play on a broken hip or something?

I saw us on the butt end of the biggest point differential in the league this weekend. On what was arguably our best shot at a victory this year.

Yup. We're bad. Really bad.

Forgot about him. The only pressure he applies is to the material in his uniform pants.

I am not picking on you or saying this in a mean way at all.....but man, that comment made me start laughing my butt off.

j/c:



https://twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ/status/775317289616936961

Erving's high snap put me in a really upset mood yesterday. After that, I had almost turned the game off right then and there.

Had issues in preseason and, obviously, didn't put in the work to get it cleaned up. Erving is a joke.

For real.... has Erving improved at all?
I didn't get to see the game yesterday - is he still getting blown up regularly?

All of the above.
Until that changes for the better, no matter what year that happens to be, I will remain aloof.

I don't think he played well, but I did not see him getting blown-up.

Bitonio did play well IIRC. Didn't notice any breakdowns on his part.

It's an NFL record.

Can you imagine if the Hall of Fame kept records for BAD things? The Browns would have their own wing.

So let me get this straight...
The Browns started the QB that they desperately tried to trade up to the #2 pick in 2012 to get against the #2 pick that they didn't want.

Our "wanted" #2 pick played horrible. The #2 pick we passed on played fantastic.

#ThatsSoBrowns

We're gonna put the 0-16 in 2016.

How can someone as big as Danny get overpowered so much by one person? One single offensive linemen and Danny is outta the picture.

Lost weight, supposedly became stronger and has put more time in. I see nothing at all changing other than, yes, he lost weight. It's amounted to nothing on the field. Watching people like Suh when they don't get double team and watching Danny, just night and day.

Depressing.

I saw a very good game from Shelton. I think a lot of people on here did so as well.

Really? The plays where I tuned into him, I saw nothing to wrote home about. He never controls the person, it appears he is always struggling for leverage or control.

1 game closer to the 2017 draft. Our next SB.

Lesson learned Sashi BPA!...BPA!... We just got our butts handed to us by our 2016 pick.

We've had some QBs here that we thought could only get better...

Lol, I'd be all about that but I told myself, I'm not buying anything Browns related until it changes. Otherwise, I'd wear that with pride.

Sure.

I thought Shelton played pretty good.

Damn really? I would go back and re-watch, but I cancelled the DVR recording during the second half as I knew it would be wasted space.

The plays I tuned into Shelton left nothing to be impressed over. Guess I picked the wrong times to focus in. I definitely was watching Schobert and Nassib the most, so good plays by Danny could've escaped me.

Thoughts.. I wasn't as disappointed as most on here appear to be. I think the big difference in the game is the Eagles never made the few big mistakes we made. More than half of our tackles on defense were by guys in their first or second year.

Our offense handed them 12 points on the fake punt, which turned into a FG, the safety, and going for it on 4th down in desperation time, which turned into a TD..

I thought we tried to get way too cute early with direct snaps to Pryor, reverses, funky formations, the ill-conceived fake punt, etc.. In general I thought Philly did a much better job of just sticking to what they thought they could do well. Heck, the first series, 3rd and 9, I thought we tried to run the option.. then upon rewatching it, the option was supposed to be the decoy, it was designed as a shuffle pass to Crow but he got tangled up with somebody in the backfield and went down.

Colquit looked good enough, now just use the 4th round pick effectively.

We gave up our customary "end of the first half" points.. glad we kept it to a FG.

Barnidge had an un-Barnidge like day.. Coleman looked ok except for the drop, hopefully he is working on catching that ball with his hands instead of his chest.

Our OL will hopefully improve with reps through the season but it's going to have to be addressed in the offseason.

agreed. this was one of his two best games as a Brown.

The rest of his class didn't fare nearly as well.

9 points on Erving for the snap.

7 points on Cooper for the offsides.

4 points on Orchard for the offsides.

That's 20 of their 29 points on 2015 top 100 draft picks.

JMO.

From draft day 2015:



Fun read: https://www.dawgtalkers.net/ubbthreads.ph...pick#Post952805

Oh, and as for post game thoughts:

Should have drafted Wentz

https://www.dawgtalkers.net/ubbthreads.ph...ntz#Post1079716

We haven't even seen Goff play, relax.

Jackson got too cute with the playcalling.

Griffin was horrible. Like worse than Johnny Manziel bad. His two best plays he threw to a man who was covered prefectly (and Pryor made a great play) and into triple coverage (luckily for him he underthrew Coleman). I can't overstate how bad I thought he was. Really, really bad.

The defense was obviously overmatched, but we all knew that would be the case.

This is going to be a very long, depressing season.

Goff? Who cares? This isn't about Goff vs Wentz, it's about the Browns not drafting Wentz when they had a shot to do so.

Wentz has played one NFL game against an awful defense.

In Charlie Frye's first career start he had 2 TDs, 0 INTs, completed 65% of his passes, and 226 yards.

I may be late to the party, but I don't like to post spur of the moment, emotional responses.

First, RG3.

I thought he had a pretty poor game. He di a lot of what I've questioned him about so far. Poor footwork, a tendency to leave the pocket pre-maturely and focus on one side of the field if not one WR.

Now in his defense, he also had a LOT of pretty good passes dropped, especially early in the game. That did him no favors when it comes to getting into a rhythm.

Many of us questioned the selection of Coleman in the first round and mainly because of his drops. That may be able to be fixed, but just a reminder that many saw this as a potential problem.

You really have to allow an OL time to gel as a unit. As such, I won't try to assess what this unit will bring. A lot of the pressure came off the right side and that's where I expected it to come from.

Nassib looked very good even if PFF it didn't see it that way. If he continues to develop, he may end up being the steal of the draft.

Our secondary is pure toast. But a lot of us saw that coming too.

It's obvious they put eight men in the box and dared RG3 to beat us. Expect a lot of that this season. People said that RG3's history played no part of what he is now. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Wentz.

With the state of our secondary, I don't believe a lot can be garnered from his performance. He does seem to be fairly accurate and be able to stand in and deliver in the face of adversity. My only fear with him is that with his lack of experience, facing real NFL D's may stunt any possible growth he could gain.

And for those claiming we should wait until we have our team built before we draft a QB. By that time, we'll be drafting in the middle of the pack with no choice other than to pay a fortune for a top pick or drafting a project. You simply don't wait that long to do it.

I don't really follow all the intricacies and positives and negatives of the draft.

But, is this true? The guy had drop problems in college? If so, why was he drafted as a receiver?

Again, I don't know about his college career.

But I will say this: Catching a football is NOT learned in the nfl. If you have problems doing it in college, problems in high school, problems in pop warner..........you just aren't going to learn how to do it. Catching a football is not a learning process if you're in the nfl.

Anyone miss Andy Lee yesterday?

Weaknesses Does his best work from outside the numbers, but lacks desired NFL size to play outside. Allows cornerbacks to leverage him against the sideline on deep throws. Takes longer than expected to gear down for comeback routes after hitting top speed. Ran limited number of simple routes. Hands are a concern. Fails to catch away from his body. Dropped 10 passes for a drop rate of 11.9 percent. Loses focus and concentration on routes that work towards the middle of the field or when he senses defenders are closing in. Had sports hernia surgery that forced him to miss his bowl game.

http://www.nfl.com/draft/2016/profiles/corey-coleman?id=2555333

Now there are a lot of positives written about him too. We've just had so many receivers here with stone hands, this sent a red flag to some posters.

Yea, but what did Brady Quinn do?