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Cleveland Browns Playmakers Adjusting To Run-Focused Approach

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmywatkin...er#357235493ef2


If the Browns have done nothing else through two weeks, they have at least established an identity: run the ball.

Cleveland showcased its dare-you-to-stop-it rushing philosophy on its final drive against the Bengals last week. Leading 28-23 with 5:55 remaining, the Browns ran the ball six straight times on the 75-yard touchdown drive.

Thanks in Large part to Nick Chubb (22 carries, 124 yards, two touchdowns) and Kareem Hunt (10 carries, 86 yards, one touchdown), the Browns ran for 215 yards agains Cincinnati. Fullback Andy Janovich said they could’ve run for a few hundred more. Joel Bitonio wouldn’t go that far, but he did enjoy his role in the Browns’ game-clinching, muscle-flexing drive.

“Those are the chances you get where you want to try to wear down the defense,” Bitonio said. With those two, it is really fun blocking for those guys. You do not really tell the difference. One guy comes in fresh, and it is just like, ‘OK, here we go. Let’s go.’”

While Bitonio cleared the way for Chubb and Hunt in Week 2, the Browns’ other playmakers made sacrifices.



Jarvis Landry, who holds the record for most receptions through the first six seasons of a career, caught three passes. Austin Hooper, who briefly became the league’s highest paid tight end when the Browns signed him this offseason, caught two passes for 22 yards. He has zero touchdowns through two games.

Odell Beckham Jr. accumulated more than half of his 74 receiving yards on his 43-yard touchdown reception in the first quarter. If the Browns stay this committed to their running backs, that probably won’t be the only game where Beckham relies on big plays for production. He’s learning to accept that he might not see his usual volume of targets.

PROMOTED

“For me, one of my biggest growths has come in acceptance in a sense and for me knowing it is probably not going to be that kind of season,” Beckham said. “Then I think you learn where you fit in and where you are able to make your plays and how you can help the team.”

Essentially, Beckham is re-defining what success will mean to him this season. One week, it might still be catching 10 passes for 100 yards. But others, he said it could mean making the block that springs Hunt or Chubb for a touchdown.

Browns offensive Coordinator Alex Van Pelt singled Hooper out as someone who has already adjusted well to the Browns run-focused attack. Hooper’s lack of targets has not at all affected the intensity with which he run blocks.

“Gees, Hoop is just a team guy,” Van Pelt said. “His run-game blocking is something that probably does not flash on TV, but you see it often on the field. He is a big part of the success, as are all the tight ends, in our run game right now.”

Van Pelt also mentioned that the Browns have already seen teams pivoting to five-defensive-lineman formations to combat the Browns’ run game. He expects they’ll see more if Chubb and Hunt continue their success.

That’s where players like Hooper, Beckham and Landry can flash their play-making abilities.

“Teams are going to have to put an extra defender down there, and then that is the old give-and-takes,” Van Pelt said. “Now, all of sudden, you are outside and you are one-on-one, you are not doubling people with the high safeties over the top and then it opens up the passing game for you. We are excited to take advantage of the matchups outside, which we will have this week.”

That give and take works both ways. After seeing plays like Beckham’s long touchdown last week, teams might think twice about stacking the box against Cleveland.

Those hard decisions are the basis upon which the Browns hope to build its offense. Their identity may be run-based, but their ceiling is based in balance.

“You saw it last week on the long touchdown,” Bitonio said. “Someone is going to have to respect that. (Beckham) still opens it up for for Jarvis underneath, Hoop underneath and for the running game.”

j/c...

I wish more guys would do that as religiously as they hit the weights. Flexible joints are less likely to sustain major injury, plus it helps recovery and muscle growth and strength gains.

Tight muscles and tendons pop & snap easily and they also limit range of motion and explosiveness.

Joe Thomas was recently on The Athletic Football Podcast and talked about how doing yoga helped him stay healthy.

Yeah whatever. It’s not like he played over 10,000 snaps in a row or anything.

Flexibility is huge!

It did not come naturally for me. While I had skinny calves and ankles, my hamstrings and especially my quads were huge. I used to leg press the entire stack w/a 260 lb OT sitting on the old Universal weight machine that we had in our high school weight room.

My hamstrings were always tight. I spent countless hours working on stretching/flexibility. It was often painful. LOL...no joke...I am not exaggerating. The tight hamstrings would lead to lower back issues. I loved lifting weights and hated stretching w/a passion. Of course, my limitations meant I had to spend more time stretching than lifting.

News & Notes: Another Browns rookie could see his role expand

3rd-round rookie Jordan Elliott has drawn praise for his work ethic

https://www.clevelandbrowns.com/news/news-notes-another-browns-rookie-is-seeing-his-role-expand


The Browns were without starting defensive tackles Larry Ogunjobi (abdomen) and Sheldon Richardson (thigh) at Wednesday's practice. It's too early to tell what it means for Sunday's game against the Colts, but coach Kevin Stefanski indicated one of their backup's roles was already growing.

The player? Third-round rookie Jordan Elliott, who has seen a steady dose of action in each of the first four games to kick off his NFL career.

"He has done a nice job and we need him to continue to progress," Stefanski said. "His role will expand. But he is very, very diligent about this. He wants to be great. He works really hard out at practice. So, he just needs to keep progressing."

With Ogunjobi sidelined for most of Sunday's second half, Elliott saw an uptick in his playing time and finished the game with 31 snaps. Though he has just three tackles on the year, Elliott has been among Pro Football Focus' highest-graded rookie defensive tackles.

Elliott's teammates have been impressed with how he's acclimated himself to the NFL game. In August, Ogunjobi raved about Elliott's attitude and desire to be great. Earlier in the season, Richardson said Elliott "knew his stuff."

"The only thing is he just needs more experience, and he is getting that slowly but surely. He is going to be just fine. He is going to be just fine in this league," Richardson said. "He is always ready. He is always alert. Usually one of the first ones in the meeting rooms and last one to leave – usually, because he has to because he is a rookie. He is going to be all right. He is going to be fine."

As for Ogunjobi and Richardson, Stefanski said their playing status will be monitored as the week progresses.

"See how those guys are starting really tomorrow," Stefanski said. "We will not have them out there today, and we will just kind of take it day by day."

Other Injury News
The Browns welcomed back TE David Njoku (knee) and DE Adrian Clayborn (hip) to practice. Clayborn was listed as limited after missing Sunday's game against the Cowboys.

Njoku on Wednesday was designated to return from injured reserve. The team has three weeks to activate him, but Njoku isn't expecting to wait that long.

"It feels really good. My body is really healed now," Njoku said. "So, I am ready to go."

Along with Richardson and Ogunjobi, LB Tae Davis (elbow) did not practice.

RB Kareem Hunt (groin) was a limited participant after missing Wednesday's and Thursday's practices last week. Despite the lack of reps throughout the week, Hunt was thrust into a bigger role Sunday after Nick Chubb was lost to a knee injury.

"I am willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win," Hunt said. "If that means getting more carries, then I am fine with that, too."

Nothing Personal
Though he finished the 2019 season as the Browns' starter at right guard, Wyatt Teller wasn't offended in the slightest when new offensive line coach Bill Callahan opened up the job to competition.

Teller, of course, won the job and has thrived in his first four games of the 2020 season. It didn't require any additional motivation to get him to this point because he pretty much maxed it out on his own.

"I knew that I could play, but I did not expect to be handed a job and I did not expect to be handed anything," Teller said. "I knew that I was going to work. I have been working the past three years that I have been in the league. I knew that it would be beneficial for the whole team to have a competition and not a 'He is our guy. An unproven guy, he is our guy.'

"I kind of understood that I knew that I had to take lots of steps, but in my mind, it was mine, it was my job, I wanted it and I was going to do whatever it took to get it."

Great, great attitude. I loved coaching guys who possessed such an attitude.

I'm glad this guy is having so much success. He's doing it the right way.

LOL...……….I'm lovin' this guy.

My family was over on Sunday and my daughter said...…"who is that #77 guy? He's playing w/bad intentions."

Man, the dude comes from right to left on pulls and traps and he is putting it on people. Gotta love it!!!!

I'm getting pretty excited about this OL!!!

He was mic’d up for the Cowboys game. They also had a long segment of him talking. I love this kid!

Teller is easily one of my favorite players, and that’s only after a few weeks lol. He’s fun

Reminds me of the Avengers movie, when Cap was giving orders to everyone, and the last one was "Hulk, smash."

I don't know if this is posted somewhere else, but this is great!

Who are your other favorite players,
I think there are a lot, and some are more popular than I feel about them.

Everybody loves Bitonio, I feel like just ehh.
I've always felt he's been just enough to not be great, never get replaced, <so I guess that's something, that's solid, but,
ehh.

For the Browns, Trying Everything May Finally Lead to Something

Cleveland’s results may not have followed the analytics strategist Paul DePodesta’s initial vision, but a 4-1 record is math anyone can do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/sport...id=tw-nytsports


By Mike Tanier
Oct. 14, 2020

The Cleveland Browns tried just about everything from 2016 to 2019 in an effort to escape decades of failure: embracing analytics, rejecting analytics, emphasizing character, ignoring character, austere scrimping, lavish spending — and sometimes attempting all of those tactics simultaneously.

Not surprisingly, the rapid succession of 180-degree lurches in organizational philosophy did not make the Browns better. Until this season, that is. The Browns have a 4-1 record, and their balanced offense and fearsome pass rush have them poised to produce their first winning season since 2007 and reach the playoffs for the first time since 2002.

The secret to the team’s turnaround is that it is no longer seeking some secret method for turning things around.

The most recent epoch of Browns futility began when their controlling owner, Jimmy Haslam, hired Paul DePodesta as chief strategy officer after a 3-13 finish in 2015. His front-office exploits for baseball’s Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s were recounted in Michael Lewis’s best seller “Moneyball” and fictionalized in the feature film of the same name. DePodesta is revered as one of the founding fathers of sports analytics: Alexander Hamilton as portrayed by Jonah Hill, a data-driven maestro of the draft and trade markets renowned for turning short-term sacrifices into long-term dividends.

DePodesta was hailed as the Browns’ latest potential savior (there have been many), someone who could easily rebuild the roster by outwitting the fusty, anti-intellectual N.F.L. establishment. Unfortunately, baseball and football are very different sports, and the Browns installed what looked like a shoddy version of “Moneyball” based less upon statistical research than book jacket blurbs and existential riddles: Saving is spending. Losing is winning. Failure is the ultimate success.

For two years, DePodesta’s regime engineered trades to acquire draft picks and traded draft picks for even more draft picks in what seemed like an effort to restock the Browns’ nonexistent farm system. Meanwhile, the coach, Hue Jackson, like the middle manager of some forgotten regional sales branch, appeared to grow a little too comfortable in an environment where winning was almost discouraged. The Browns were 1-31 over two seasons, an anti-accomplishment even by their standards, but the team’s topsy-turvy messaging made it hard to tell whether the losses were part of a counterintuitive plan.

Haslam, who had burned through three sets of coaches and general managers since purchasing the team in 2012, replaced a top DePodesta lieutenant, Sashi Brown, with a traditionalist general manager, John Dorsey, late in the 2017 season. Dorsey selected Baker Mayfield with the top pick in the 2018 draft, acquired Odell Beckham Jr. in a trade with the Giants, and made other moves that signaled a shift in the team’s priorities from “win in some far-flung future” to “win soon.”

Describing what happened next in a few sentences would be like trying to summarize the French Revolution on a cocktail napkin. After a rolling series of boardroom clashes, Jackson was fired, Dorsey gained greater control of football operations, DePodesta donned a phantom mask and disappeared into the rafters, and the inexperienced Freddie Kitchen rose from obscurity to become the Browns’ offensive play caller midway through the 2018 season.

Kitchens’s brief tenure unfolded like the sequence in a campus comedy where the lads of Alpha Kappa Chugga lock the dean in his closet and declare every week to be Greek Week. Having finished the 2018 season with a 5-2 hot streak and after earning a little too much preseason hype, the Browns played as though they expected to reach the playoffs through sheer talent and rebellious swagger.

They went 6-10 instead, as Kitchens committed basic strategic blunders, Beckham and Myles Garrett got into on-field altercations with opponents and Mayfield regressed at quarterback while publicly feuding with the local and national media. Few teams have ever allowed so little success to go so completely to their heads.

Kitchens and Dorsey were fired at the end of the 2019 season, with DePodesta reappearing from a trap door beneath the stage to introduce yet another cast of characters, led by General Manager Andrew Berry and Coach Kevin Stefanski.

Superficially, the latest leadership change looks like the result of another boardroom coup, with DePodesta ousting Dorsey’s royalists and inserting inexperienced, analytics-friendly functionaries with scanty résumés in their place. But the newcomers appear more committed to winning games than engaging in thought experiments: They acquired veteran talent in their first off-season instead of using last year’s “Animal House” shenanigans as justification for another “Moneyball”-themed roster purge. Analytics now operate under the hood for the Browns instead of flapping like a flag mounted from the car’s antenna.

It’s tempting to interpret the Browns’ current success as a triumph for DePodesta’s initial vision, though it would also be rather sad to interpret four early-season wins after four years of upheaval as any sort of “triumph.” More accurately, the Browns have finally built a quality roster despite themselves, with some key pieces arriving during the first “Moneyball” dynasty (Garrett, wide receiver Jarvis Landry), many during the Dorsey rebellion (Mayfield, Beckham, running backs Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt) and a few during the current Grand Reformation (offensive lineman Jack Conklin, tight end Austin Hooper).

The 2020 Browns are enjoying success because they are a talented team that executes fundamentally sound game plans each week instead of prematurely boasting of their pending greatness or adhering to a franchise-building paradigm that sounds suspiciously like a multilevel marketing scheme. It’s a simple formula that won’t inspire any intellectual movements or feature films. But it’s working, at least for now.

These parts of the article stuck out to me.

"the Browns have finally built a quality roster despite themselves"
ohh

OIC, Only in Cleveland.

This is "win now" for us. Win all you can, whenever you can. Just win, baby! Don't need a gadget article to see what is happening here.

I like that too ... it’s good to have a balance of analytics and KYP

JMHO, it's nice to see a HC who has a clue how tp prepare, who's able to delegate and hold people accountable. I'm looking forward to the HARD decisions. THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE- will we give Mayfield big money. I'm betting NOT. He has an arm, he has swag, but I don't know if he's tall enough or processes info fast enough. The front office KNOWS he holds on to the ball for too long. QB in the NFL is almost impossible, yet seems Cinc QB is good one.....I'd be real surprised if we gave BM big money from his performance this year so far......GO Browns!!!

That is such a way of thinking I disagree with.
I don't know much about the money, but in my opinion, if the Browns,
AFTER 25 YEARS, of looking for a Qb, (Without exag, at least since Couch)

Don't want to commit to Baker for long term, then it is just ANOTHER EXAMPLE, of continuance to commit
to circumstances that ensure losing.

I don't know about "Big Money".
The money went off the charts in my opinion when Couch got 7 million in 99, I've never seen a player, worth 7 million a year

Not even blank, not even blank in 1978? No, nope, not even blank in 1978,. or 79.

I'm confused, you mean there's never been a player worth $7 million for one year of work?

Winning the Super Bowl is worth waaaaay more than $7 to a team, it's probably closer to $200-300MM once you consider jersey sales, advertising, naming rights, etc, and the QB is worth at least 30% of a team's winning chances.

I might be misunderstanding what you're saying though.

Myka, Hitt included the line,
" Will we give Mayfield big money, I'm betting NOT."
then listed, imperfections.
I say.
I may not understand "Big Money" but, you have to keep your quarterback.

JMHO, you don't keep your QB if he's not playing well, smart. Baker Mayfield hasn't beaten many good teams. IE Baltimore, Pittsburgh in our division- everyone has a book on Mayfield- pressure in his face. I loved the rollouts early in year, but teams are taking that away. Again, according to folks to track stuff way more than I- he takes to much time decision making, he holds the ball to long. I hope we win more games, but with OBJ out we'd better be ready for harder wins. Teams will take run away and will Baker produce....maybe. Who's the worst QB in our division, I say Baker is......GO Browns!!!

Rashard Higgins Proving To Be Key Part Of Browns Future At WR
ByJAKE BURNS

https://247sports.com/nfl/cleveland-brow...t-WR-156315604/

Thanks for that. We’ve all known that Higgy and Baker have good chemistry ... it’s been that way for 2.5 years now. It’s worth it to have him on our team

I forgot to mention Higgins in the post-game thread. Another good game, big plays.
He does those things when given the chance. Does it all the time.

Pay tha' man?

True. Also...'the residue of good planning'.

I wonder what this means for the current contracts of Beckham and Landry for 2021. Combined, they will be a cap hit of over $30M. (1) That's ridiculous, and (2) If we do extend Higgins, my guess would be that they want him on the field more.

It doesn't seem to me to make that much sense to be paying three WRs that much as a unit when there are other extensions that should be dished out (Mayfield & Ward 5th year options), maybe Teller, Ogunjobi, etc. And who knows how they feel about paying Chubb who doesn't have a 5th year option and will be a FA and the end of next year.

I'm not saying cut those guys but man something needs to be done about what they are making. Plus I think the league is expecting a decrease in the overall cap as a result of COVID.

I don't think they are talking about breaking the bank type money for his extension. 3 years $10 mill - 5 guaranteed.

Agreed. I don't think they are looking to break the bank either for Higgins. I do think if they extend him, it would be more than $5M guaranteed however. Why would Higgins sign that? My point is if you are extending him, you are doing so with the intent of putting him on the field more. With OBJ and Landry, you are limiting the amount of snaps, particularly when we've seen how many snaps the TE unit gets.

OBJ has been dealing with injuries for the past 4 years. Landry 2 years.

Landry and/or OBJ were always going to have to have something done about their contracts after this season. I don’t see either taking a pay cut.