DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns Linebacker 2 continued

They are beyond horrible abd we desperately need help.

They're not great, but the angst is overblown. Sounds like Mack could be back fairly soon.

I agree, but hopefully with Mack back and getting Greedy and Johnson back also will help cover some of the glaring holes.

Seeing guys like Thomas, Sendejo, and Taki Taki doesn’t inspire much confidence moving forward ... we are just so thin after the DL

i believe that’s Taki Taki

It is. And he can't cover either. So there is that.

As much as I like OBJ, I can't help but think of how much better our team would probably be right now if we never traded for him, and instead made a similar trade that the Steelers did in the 2019 draft, and moved up to select Devin Bush.

We'd still have Jabrill Peppers to fill our gapping hole at safety too.

Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

Peppers isn't "filling many holes" right now.

You wouldn't take Peppers over Sendejo right now?


I'll say what I said in another thread. I admit that I was thinking about trading OBJ while watching the game last night. Not because he's ineffective or I was pissed about his dumb mistakes from teh Ravens game. Dude is a talent that any team would be lucky to have... but he just kinda seems like the odd guy out. Things were going just about as well as they could with the offense last night, and he really was only involved for a brief portion of the game (right around when he got his TD). Otherwise, he was super quiet all night. Baker seems to prefer targeting Hodge vs OBJ.

Just seems like, with all the guys that need touches/targets on this offense, OBJ not being in sync w/ the offense (or other way around, not trying to lay blame with this statement) was glaring to me last night.

This is only in your head; seriously. I don't say that confrontationally, but as a statement of your perspective not reflecting what actually happened, at all.


OBJ caught twice as many balls as Hodge.
OBJ caught 25% of all Browns completions. 1 in 4 completions was to OBJ.


As for Peppers... .I wouldn't want to see him in coverage, but at least he could tackle.

I gotta rewatch that game and/or get my eyes checked.

Peppers can't cover and takes bad angles when tackling.

I would probably take you over Sandejo, and I have never seen you play.

I know you say this is jest, we all do that sort of thing, but this made me think of something Dave Castro once said when talking about the athletes at the Crossfit Games and the separation between the top-level elites and the guys the tv coverage never really talk about: "It's absolutely amazing just how good you have to be in order to suck at the Crossfit Games."

The chasm in strength, athleticism, ability between the elite and the run-of-the-mill pro is significant, but for every step you take down from there, it is nearly exponential.

These guys are getting carved up and don't punish with hard stops much. Our LB corps is going to see more slot and underneath passing, I suspect. Secondary is a real weak link.

This is true in so many other venues. I was a very good basketball player and would often dominate. However, I played in a summer league when I was probably at my best w/guys who were in the NBA. Guys like Isaiah Thomas, Rodman, Barkley, etc and it was a whole new world. Same thing can be said of boxing. I imagine it's true in almost all sports.

When I was heavily competing in triathlon, I was routinely qualifying for and going to Nationals. It was almost a foregone conclusion that every event I entered, I would finish well enough to qualify. At Nationals and competing to be on Team USA and go to Worlds, however, I was lucky to finish in the upper 40th percentile of over 1500 other competitors and only the top 17 slots went to Worlds..... and, we're just the amateur Masters athletes. The young bucks, the real Pros.. they are all in a completely different stratosphere. The absolute best I was competing against was perhaps on par with the absolute worst with a Pro card.

Same thing, basically, in every sport I've gone into - Olympic lifting, Crossfit, running, etc.... it is utterly amazing just how good you have to be in order to suck as a Pro.

That said... Sendejo sucks.

So what is the depth for us. I thought he stunk it up. Surely we have someone better or can replace him. Practice squad?

With a lot of the players I wonder how big a role new scheme, new teammates/communication, and limited live reps play. Thomas just seems to get burnt in man coverage repeatedly, though, so I don't know if those apply to him very well. Getting a feel for how to pass off zone coverage with different guys can take time. Delpit, Wilson, Greedy, and Kevin Johnson were getting a good chunk of the starter reps until they got hurt. Throw in going against plays you hadn't seen before while having to operate within rules that skew towards favoring the offense and some growing pains are inevitable.

I'm not saying any of the players that have been complained about have been great. But I think we've seen worse despite "better" circumstances (full off-seasons, returning systems, fewer injuries to starters) in the not too distant past.

Tackling has been a mess, but that's somewhat to be expected when many teams hardly did any of it until the real games started. You can do a lot of 7 on 7 stuff to kind of get receivers/DBs ready without a ton of contact. The only way to really get ready for live, full speed tackling (and the microadjustments, angles, force, grip, etc required) is live full speed tackling.

Some PFF grades for our LBers and safeties.

Sendejo is at 42.5. That is 63rd out of 69 ranked safeties.

The new guy from Jax, Harrison, has a grade of 33. He has only played 8 snaps and is not included in the rankings. But, a 33 grade is unbelievably low.

Karl Joseph is 45th out of 69.

Malcolm Smith is 11th out of 61 ranked LBers.

Jacob Phillips doesn't have enough snaps to be ranked, but his grade is 47.5

Goodson is at 42.1 and is ranked 45th out of 61 LBers.

TakiTaki is at 60.5 and is 18th out of 61 LBers.

Quite a few of us predicted that both units would be weak this year. Thus far, these two units are pretty dreadful.

I think we need to play in a 5-2 when Vernon, Clayborne, Mack, and Williams come back.

So we have Garrett, Vernon, Richardson, Clayborn, and Ogunjobi on the field. Who is dropping in to coverage? It also means we have only four DBs on the field which means a linebacker is covering a wide receiver at time.

There is a reason no one runs a 5-2. Teams don’t “run a defense” they match personnel with the offense and go from there. Having five linemen on the field severely limits a teams ability to blitz and disguise coverages.

Sendejo could be dropped right now and we could pick someone up (Randall?) who could replace him within a week and be better

I've never seen a 515 defense run more than a couple times a game, but it might work

Then again, we don't have 5 DB's right now either.

Joseph is what he is, a box safety (ie: the aforementioned Peppers), Ward is the Truth and Mitch is always solid. That's where it ends right now. How can we even dream of running a nickle on 60% of plays when we don't even have 4 DB's, let alone 5?

Thomas was suppose to be our 6th "CB" in name only, he is a specialist in reality. Sendejo is hot garbage after hiding next to Harrison Smith for years.

What I wouldn't give to see what this defense was with Williams, KJ and Delpit. You really can't ever have too many DB's, can you?


Hopefully we'll get KJ and Greedy back soon.

And Mack for that matter. I'd seriously consider Mack manning the middle with Smith as the WILL (LB2) going forward with what the early results of Goodson and Takitaki have been.

It doesn't really matter much how the d-line plays when you're as weak as we are right now in the middle of the field.

Decent assessment, RedBaron. What we want to do is a far cry from what we can do in the secondary as of Sunday. Even moreso what we need to do. I was crushed when Delpit went down because I believe a defense, regardless of configuration must be strong up the middle, just like baseball. I truly wanted to see him play. Not confident that TakiTaki is our needed answer. A strong DL is no replacement for strong LBing. But we will need to get stronger there or get truly gouged repeatedly. If Mixon can do it, a number of other runners can as well.

I think I've got it

Week 5, KJ and Greedy come back, we move money Mitch to Free, sit Sendejo next to Thomas on the bench...

CB!: Ward
CB2: Greedy
CB3: KJ
FS: Money
SS: Joseph

MLB: Mack
WILL: Smith

Maybe? Too many new faces in new places? Hey, at least we'd have decent players out there. I don't think Goodson has the foot speed anymore to man the middle (actually, I don't think he ever did, but we needed someone).

Garrett, Vernon, Richardson, Clayborn, and Ogunjobi

When your LB's are as bad as ours... there is no reason to run a 4-3. Especially when you are comparing them to our 5th DL


We would be keeping Takitaki off the field with Mack and Goodson on the field nothing else would change.

Garrett, Vernon, Richardson, Clayborn, and Ogunjobi 5
Mack/Goodson 1/2
Ward, Williams, Joseph and Sendejo/Mitchell 4/5

that's better than
Garrett, Vernon, Richardson, and Ogunjobi 4
Wilson, Goodson, Takitaki 3
Ward, Williams,Sendejo, Joseph 4

Ideally I'd rather have

Garrett, Vernon, Richardson, Clayborn, and Ogunjobi 4
Wilson 1
Ward, Williams, Mitchell, Sendejo, Joseph 5

that's how bad our LB core is.

How often do you think we have three linebackers on the field?

So like, when teams run a two TE set then against us all game, you dont want to try to stop it then?

Mack Wilson is back!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFaTrxTl9J3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

thats pretty incredible given the short amount of time

Man, somebody had a LOT of free time to make that video, lol!

J/C. This is fantastic news, having our #1 LB and #2 and 3 corners possibly available this week and beyond should really sure some things up. We have given up a ton of yardage and have looked really shaky in coverage. I am hoping for for an Int this week, If we can get a little confidence on defense, I think this group could be sneaky good based on the pass rush. I hope sir Olivier Vernon is capable to give us something instead of inactive.

this year? 0% of the time. Next year should be a different story.

What.

Takitaki is not a better linebacker than Mitchell is a CB or Clayborne is a DL.

Therefore, we should run 2 LB and 5 DL and 4 DB's.

It would be ideal to have better players in the game than standing on the sideline watching Takitaki tackle like Jermaine Whitehead.

I would LOVE to have a tone setting LB like Ray Lewis, Mike Singletary, Dick Butkus, Lawrence Taylor or Clay Matthews Jr