DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2018 NFL Season Looking Back: Browns 12 Ravens 9 Post Game Thoughts

Just had to bring some bleach and a good detergent.

j/c

I am loving Harrison. The D has been very good all year, and yesterday didn't allow one the NFL's better offenses into the end zone. I know they allowed 45 points to Oakland last week, but a good part of that was after we lost Mitchell. I was dreading the DB play yesterday, but Gaines really stepped up big.

There has been mention of wanting to see this team learn to win. In the last 2 games we have had leads in the 4th quarter only to allow the other teams to tie and force OT. The next step is to learn how to shut down those 4th quarter come backs and close out games where we have the lead.

Back to Harrison. Last year I bought my first ever jersey, a Garrett #95. This year I bought another, Ogunjobi #65. If Harrison continues the way he has, a third jersey will be in order. Let the crowd honor the obvious choices, I will honor the guys in the trenches.

Thoughts:

Desmond Harrison is a beast. There was the one sack, but it wasn't on him, IMO. Baker ran right across his face into Suggs. Kinda hard for Harrison to block that.


Special Teams - they were DRAMATICALLY better. Most notably, our coverage teams weren't giving up half the field with every punt/kick return.

Defense - Holy crap, these guys are crazy to watch. I noticed one play where Garrett was rushing forward with a separate blocker on each arm - and he was pushing them back. Ward is just amazing.... it won't be long before OC's & QB's just start staying away from him and scheming things to attack away from him. Based on what I've seen from him, though, that is when I expect him to start baiting them into still throwing his way.


Offense - these guys have No Quit in them! They are just finding a way to get things done. It isn't always pretty... ok, it frequently isn't pretty at all, but they're getting it done! Credit to Haley for being a bit of Mad Scientist that figures out on-the-fly what is going to work against what a team is throwing against us. Without that, there is little chance that last drive in OT goes the way it does..... he saw some things and ran with it; I'm sure of it.


Avery - at one point, I wondered if he was even active for the game. I checked the online stats and saw him nowhere and hadn't seen him on the field. Then, in the 4th I started seeing him and he was showing up all over the place.

Willies! This kid earned some more time. He has a LOT to learn, but he did well.


Williams, Haley, Hue, Dorsey, & Haslam - I'll say that if 2019 season tickets went on sale today, they would probably sell out inside of a couple days. These guys have restored FUN NFL FOOTBALL to the North Coast.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, we look like a real NFL team. We look competent, and in those stretches at the end of a game when things are tight and we could normally expect the same old implosion, I'm finding myself on the edge of my seat HOPING and BELIEVING in these guys. Thank you to those men!!

We'd have to stop running a soft zone/prevent in those situations in order to do this. Williams seems to be a True Believer in not continuing to do what got you there and instead goes the nervous nelly route of "don't give up the big play".

When Landry didn’t go out of bounds we should have called a timeout. We could have had a couple more passes to the sidelines or one more pass down the middle. Bad game management. Luckily it didn’t come back to bite us (this time).

What is the point of the packages the Ravens run with Lamar Jackson? They are showing no creativity.

Late in the game the Ravens were in our red zone and we blitzed at least seven guys. Everyone knew we were blitzing and where the blitz was coming from. Baltimore called a perfect screen pass and made a huge play. If we’re going to blitz as much as we do, we have to disguise it better (we won’t).

Mayfield makes some beautiful decisions and throws. Two that stick out to me are the throw to make it into the red zone to Higgins and the play coming out of our own end zone to Devalve. Really good stuff.

Harrison held his own against one of the best.
I am and was a Baker fan before the draft.
He was learning the whole game. Appears to get better as the game goes on.

Harrison too is surprising me w/ how quickly he's evolving.
Tough assignment yesterday and he rose up!
JT was there and I'm sure he was beaming!

Denzel 'Washington' Ward was a Stud in College and soon, like in college, his area of the field will be known to be off limits to QB's.

Wish Hue had been miked when Haley called that reverse...
What the F Bomb and more came out! ;-)

One of the Ravens Corners said Baker is hard to pass defend because of this height or lack of it. He kind of hides back there I guess.
Not sure why he was able to escape the grasp so many times.... he's much more elusive than he should be.

D in all phases played lights out. If we see that every week!
Next Squealers should be fun!

Hyde needs to be fed. That's his MO. As the O Line is now starting to gel he'll just get more dangerous.

WAY too much D pressure on our kickers... their protection is horrible.

You don't really believe that's the way things work around here do you?

Rasta, i just got to know brother....

Why the strong hate on Mayfield? Its like your arguments dont even synch up with anything we have seen from him?

he does NOT have a mediocre arm..no, its not a rocket, but he does have an above average arm strength. He throws with anticipation, hes accurate, he has touch, he has no fear, he will rifle it in to a tight window. he is calm under pressure, will slide up, deliver and take a hit like a champ, get up and do it again. He has an insanely fast release, from multiple arm angles.

I just do not understand where you get your information from. nothing you say jives with what everyone sees...not just us, but near about EVERYONE.

Are you hating just to hate?

Just a point of interest: we just beat the 4th best Defense in the league; they are 5th best Passing and 5th best Rushing. If you go by Scoring Defense, they are the 2nd best in the league.

However, we can boast the 2nd best Rushing Offense in the league.
We are also the 12th best Scoring Defense that is tied for 3rd in INT's, 3rd in FF's (1st in recoveries!), and 2nd in PDef.

This one:

Not sure what happened in Oakland either. This should be a top-of-the-league defense. I wonder if the Mitchell injury really derailed them that game. We looked much more composed this week.

He did play like 11 snaps ... Mostly to block or be an outlet receiver. But still only 3 carries. I thought that Hyde had the hot hand going and we kinda messed up that momentum, by forcing some early carries for Chubb.

I would rather we pound Hyde for a half or better, then bring in Chubb with his fresh legs.

He had a 4th ... his only good run ... sweep around the left end ... was a hold ... he gained like 12 - 15 ..

Not much of a difference but it was one more and that adds 25% on to his previous total ... *L* ...

Having watched some of those 31 other kickers, not sure some of them are any better. For a while now I thought FG kicking was getting almost too automatic, if a FG wasn't over 45 yards it seemed like they were making everything.. I've never seen kickers struggle the way they seem to be this year.

I was talking to my son about our kicking woes and he made a good point.. when was the last time we had this many really important kicks in games? Usually we kick 4 FGs in a game so we can lose 28-12.. Now that we are competitive, games are close.. we need every point.

It's going to be a long season since I think this trend will continue, we will be in a lot of close games and we will be uncertain at the kicker position for the rest of the year.. buckle up.

in terms of the Ravens: I wonder if they really don't trust Lamar that much? They just use him as a runner. He threw once, but it was ugly

Even if they don't trust him, why just run him up the middle? What's the upside of that play? If it were my team, I'd rather just have Flacco get the ball.

yeah it was strange

I saw an article or something where Martin Gramatica suggested that moving the PAT back to make it a 30 yard kick has sort of messed up kickers. They could notice flaws with their kicks during a PAT that ultimately wouldn't result in a miss. So they could make subtle adjustments to their kicking and it would pay off while taking longer shots. Now any slight error in a kick results in a missed extra point, and it starts to play mind-games with a kicker.

Without that hold, he does not get past the line of scrimmage.

- Harrison. Beast. With Joe Thomas retiring, we had a huge hole to fill. Drafted a guy and considered moving a guy over to help. And after all that a UDFA has taken charge and OWNED it. We have our starting LT. Super excited! He did extremely well against Suggs, who is no slouch. I saw a few plays where Suggs was tossed around easily.

- Mayfield kept calm, and did the darn thing to win the game. If he can make quicker reads, more consistently, he'll continue to get better.

- Hollywood! Excellent catches! He's starting to make it look easy. Hope he recovers from his MCL quickly. We need him.

- Landry! Love his heart and passion. Bonehead play where he didn't step out of bounds, but it is what it is.

- Devalve sighting!!! I've been missing this guy! He is a playmaker. Came in the game and got a crucial catch.

- Njoku... The more and more I see him play, the more and more I get frustrated. The drops, the flags, the missed blocks... Gotta do better. If not, give me fells and devalve. They are wayyyyy more consistent.

- Haley. It's impossible to call a perfect game. I'm realistic about that, but some of his playcalling baffles me. We need to get Landry and Duke the ball more in the passing game. The one thing I do like is run plays. He doesn't stop. Hyde has been a good addition.

- Entire defense played well. Stopped a tough offense, limiting them to only FGs. Highly impressive considering the field position. I'd like to see the guys limiting the run though. Collins was gashing the defense until he got hurt. I believe when he left, thats when we got better containing their offense.

- Peppers balled out. Ward balled out.

- I'm still iffy on Schobert. As much as Gregg hypes him as being a super smart player. I'd like to see more from him. I'd actually like to see him at Sam more often on blitzes. I think he is a better blitzing LB than Kirksey, but I know Avery is getting some time there as well, and he can apply pressure pretty well. Just ranting on this topic. Nothing big.

- Ogbah. Gotta step it up.

- Randall is in my opinion is pushing to have a pro bowl year. Randall and Ward have elevated this secondary drastically.

- Special teams showed some improvement. Hopefully they'll do even better next game. I dont think we have the right mentality gunners. They suck. Gotta get guys who will do anything to make a play, because making that play determines if they will be on this roster. See Josh Cribbs. Everyone isn't built with his mentality though.

- Glad Hue got his first division win. 2-2-1. Lets go!!!

We held Baltimore to 3 FGs despite our offense continually giving them excellent field position.

We also won the game.

Maybe it's time to let it go.

Crazy game, we're all going to have heart problems come January...

So glad to see the Browns overcome quite a bit to get out of that game.

I'm hoping that Baker, and the offense had a moment in the overtime period, where they kinda collectively thought "the hell with this, let's stop playing scared"

If you look at last week's offense in overtime, and most of the offense in yesterday's extra time, they looked skittish. They were caught between not wanting to be agressive, but not wanting to try to chug along with 2 and 3 yard handoffs... You have to be agressive in overtime. They eventually were, and you saw what it did for the offense once Mayfield hit Willies for that big play, they followed it up with two HUGE running plays from Duke Johson, and mind you, they did it when Baltimore knew the Browns were probably done throwing.

I kinda hope that's what happened, but we'll see. Regardless, this team has graduated from being behind two scores in the fourth, to now learning how to close out games. There were moments that could have been had, that would have avoided the OT. Callaway had a huge drop, Njoku a drop. Landry not getting out of bounds on that great play. I think they'll get there, but it's going to be like this until they do.

Sucks to see Higgins go down. Sounds like he will be back in a few weeks though. We need him. He's becoming somewhat dependable. Willies did a hell of a job stepping in and making the game's biggest play.

Njoku just kills me, he's such a ridiculous athlete, but his hands are not good at all. I really don't know if that's something he can truly fix. Sure, improvements can be made, but is he ever going to be a tight end you can lean on? I really wonder if TE is an area that the Browns look to improve come April. (I know, we shouldn't be talking draft, especially with how these first 5 games have gone, just a thought)

Desmond Harrison has done a great job stepping in for Joe Thomas. He struggled with Suggs a few times yesterday, but overall, you have to be happy with how he has just stepped in and done his job.

I think the best part of this game is we faced the Ravens and took their best shot. We didn't catch them on some off week, or we just had some fluke game. We gave them a dose of what they are so used to getting from the Steelers and Bengals. Defensively, the Ravens played really well, and the Browns defense made a pretty good Ravens offense look horrible. They came in 3-1 averaging over 30 points a game and limped out with 3 field goals. The Browns haven't won a lot of games the last 10 years, and when they have won, there's always a yeah-but factor, but not yesterday. They earned it. Pretty awesome.

I thought Jabril Peppers played his best game as a Cleveland Brown. A lot more involved, a lot more physical. Someone on twitter during the game tweeted out that he was playing like an AFCN safety. Couldn't agree more. I really hope he finds his place in the defense, because he has the tools to be a good player. Forget the special teams crap. He's not good at it, and we'll find someone else. If he turns into a good safety nobody will care that he's not a good punt returner.

Speaking of special teams...

YIKES. Special teams has cost us several games this year. They seemingly are flagged on almost every play. We've had numerous gaffes of almost every single type. This isn't healthy for a growing team. I don't blame Amos Jones for the front office not being able to find a competent kicker, but I can absolutely blame him for this team being flagged on every single punt return situation. This is probably the worst special teams unit I have seen out of the Browns since the rebirth, and probably of all time.

The officiating yesterday was once again, an absolute joke. And once again, it seemed to be slanted against the Browns. Before a block in the ball call on a Browns punt, the Browns had 10 penalties to the Ravens ZERO. In this age of refs throwing flags all over the place, to not have one single flag is laughable. Oh, and by the way, on that block in the back call, the refs absolutely botched the spot, giving the Ravens 10-15 extra yards. Nice job.

The refs are doing a horrible job, and we haven't even had one of those is it a catch? type plays yet.

I thought the crowd yesterday was amazing. They didn't stop the entire game, even when things were getting really tough. We were close to losing the game, and even moreso were close to coming away with another tie.

I thought Hue Jackson did the right thing in keeping the offense out there on that 4th down play (resulted in that no-call on Landry being mugged). No way he allows them to go back out there if it's Tyrod Taylor, or Deshaun Kizer, or any of the other bad QB's we've rolled out there. He knows that Baker Mayfield has the confidence of his teammates. I think in an honest moment, he'd proably admit that with an 8 point lead, and a few inches to go, he would have let the offense get back out there to seal the game against the Raiders.

I've also seen a lot of people slamming Hue Jackson for possibly thinking they were in regulation and that there were 2 seconds left. It's easy to get caught up in the moment, it was an extremely long game, and I think you can slam Hue for a lot of things, but going after him about that is ridiculous and spiteful. Tony Grossi also pointed out that there were personnel on both teams that thought they had to possibly go out there for a kickoff play. It happens. It's a small mistake, and also harmless.

I think we can beat the Chargers.

Ouch! That should of been called for two fouls.

And it was badly explained by the ref. There was an obvious block in the back right near where the punt was caught, and one right at the end of the play, but the referee, who did this multiple times all game, did not give the number of the player who committed the penalty.

Can I get something else out, while we're all piling on the refs? Can we stop with the referees being part of the broadcast? I'm tired of seeing these retired clowns come on and just tote the company line. I hardly see them being critical of anyone. They just agree with whatever is being called and side with the refs. The idiots during the Raider game last week even had the nerve to say the refs were doing a good job. My god, what an absolute joke, although Dean Blandino's face after that reversal was hilarious.

Couple of thoughts.

I was really hard on Peppers and our OLB, Kirksey, and especially Collins, early in the game. All 3 guys really stepped up big time. Collins finally started looking like the guy we were supposed to get in the trade with the Pats. Kirksey started looking like he returned to health.

I thought that Gaines had a solid game as well.

Baker really spreads the ball around.

D. Njoku 6 catches for 69 yards

J. Landry 80 5 catches also for 69 yards

Higgins 3 catches for 66 yards

Willies 3 catches for 61 yards

DeValve 1 catch for 26 yards

Callaway 3 catches for 22 years

3 others caught at least 1 pass

That's really good against an outstanding defense.

People have been calling them the new Kardiac Kids. But that was a generation ago.

These are the Kardiac GrandKids!

I agree with most of what you said, but I disagree with this sentence. In the last 2 games we have had 4th quarter leads and could not prevent the other team from tying the game and send it into OT. We were able to win the last, but I believe closing out games would be preventing the other team scoring.

I am a tad worried about Landry's lack of intelligence to not get out of bounds (and he also ran backwards the one pass play LOL)

His emotions bring so much for our team .. I hope he doesn't end up hurting us with them in some instances

- The NFL refs are absolutely no doubt in my mind in Vegas' pocketbook.

- I never seen more Ref huddles in a single game, then when I watch a Browns Game. Its almost like they huddle up and say "ok guys, who has a call they use against Cle? WE cant let the misfits win"

- We have the Def rookie of the year (Ward), offensive rookie of the year (Baker), and the Defensive player of the year on this team(Ward/Myles).

- We have absolutely the worst ST in football. I don't know how Amos can look in the mirror and collect a paycheck. Every aspect of this team is better significantly, except his unit. That's coaching. There is no excuse.

- We need a K. Joseph looks like Tim Wakefield out there.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

AHEM .... cough cough .... THE SIGNATURE .... cough cough ...

Our special teams had a better day that Baltimore's.

You are usually level-headed, but I disagree w/you here. Our D played great. Baltimore has been good on O all year. We held them to 3 FGs.

One of those FGs occurred after Baker was picked off at the 33 yard line. Holding them to a FG was a win.

Additionally, our offense couldn't get out of their own end and gave Baltimore the ball 3 straight times at the 40 or beyond.

The defense also stopped them in OT after our O couldn't score. They also won the turnover battle.

I get that the love for Baker is blooming, but our D was the driving force behind that victory and they are not getting enough credit.

And I am not bad-mouthing Baker. I'm just giving the D some of the love they deserve.

If you go to the ravens message board I bet they would say the exact same thing. The defense did their job but the offense couldn't score enough to win.

In my mind this is as team win as it gets. We don't win without that defense and we don't win without baker.

If you want to give this win to any one individual, in my mind it would be Ward. A key interception inside our 5 ydline and a blocked FG. He saved potentially 10 pts.

There's a lot of things baker does we don't get to see by sitting at home. He's always talking on the sidelines and always talking to his o-line. I recommend to anyone getting a ticket and watching in person. It's awesome.

That's debatable.

I thought we only had 1 left. . . . .

If we only had 1, not calling the timeout is smart, IMO. Just imagine what we would be saying if time ran out on us in FG range....

I agree with everything you said here. But the statement was that the Browns are learning to close out games. My point is that in both of the last 2 games, they have allowed the opposition to tie the games in the 4th quarter.

Specifically to yesterdays game, they had a 3 point lead when the Ravens started their last scoring drive at 4:29 left at the Baltimore 34. It was an 11 play drive that covered 52 yards in 3:37 and ended with a 32 yard FG from the Browns 14 with :52 left. The Browns defense had been stifling the Ravens offense all game, they only allowed 4-3rd down conversions the whole game. But Baltimore converted 2 of those 3rd downs on that drive, both on big plays.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/playbyplay?gameId=401030770

Again, I agree with everything you said, but closing out a game means, to me, preventing the opposition from overcoming your lead in the 4th quarter. The Browns didn't do that yesterday. They won, and they did so with a stifling defense for most of the game. And they prevented a TD in the final drive. But they couldn't prevent the Ravens from tying the score in crunch time. They didn't close out the game.

Just so you know, I wasn't bashing Baker. I didn't want the guy before the draft, but I am happy we drafted him. I think he has a real chance to be good. His poise, confidence, arm strength, and leadership are all the real deal.

I was just trying to give some credit to the D.

And you're right...........it was a "team win."

I get what you are saying and am not really arguing, but the D did hold them to a FG rather than giving up a late TD, as our D's of the past have.

I think they deserve a ton of credit and are not getting enough.