DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns: Midterm Evaluation

The Browns are 5 and 3 and I think almost all of us would have been happy w/that record if we were asked about it before the season. I am not bad-mouthing the record, but it feels somewhat shallow to me. It's great that we have beaten bad teams and one decent team, but we got blown out by two division rivals and got pushed around by the Las Vegas Raiders in a poor weather game.

I think we will probably make the playoffs given our good first half record and how weak our remaining schedule is. That's good news. I don't get the feeling we are a true contender though. It seems like we will make the playoffs but get outclassed by true playoff teams.

Thus, I have mixed emotions about the team. I'm happy we are doing well and being in the playoffs will be exciting, but I don't think we have enough to be a serious contender.

I would love to hear your feelings about this and we can evaluate the various strengths and weaknesses of the team. What areas do we need improvement? What are our strengths? Weaknesses? Do we have enough strengths to overcome our weaknesses? Is this just a year we grow or do you think we are true contenders?

All opinions are welcomed, but can we please keep the personality crap out of this? Give your opinions and make your arguments, but please don't start w/the "agenda" talk. Keep it civil, please?

Without going into specifics, I need to remind myself to be happy about where we are right now.

Coming off the season that we did.
New coaches/systems, etc.
Personnel question marks at key spots.
No offseason further hampering the coaching and FO turnover.

All that, and we are not only fielding a competent-looking team (which by itself is a MASSIVE improvement), but we're also winning. It's perfectly fine to have mixed emotions, because we're a mixed up team. Certain areas have been addressed, and certain ones haven't. This roster fix wasn't going to be completed in one offseason. We have a ton of talent, but several gaping holes that need to be filled with at least average talent.

Raiders game really sucked. The ends of some of our wins were also concerning. I'm very happy to be getting mad about that vs getting mad about already looking to the draft well before the midpoint of the season.

We're doing good. We need more and need to keep going.

It's past Halloween, at the mid-point of the season, and nearly Thanksgiving... and Browns football is still very relevant.

Given that my late summer expectations were to see a much, much more up & down rollercoaster type team, I have to say that I'm generally pleased. We're seeing what we all knew going into the season, though... that we still have a lot of holes and most all of them are on Defense.

I don't like how easily and completely our offense has been rendered inert in our three losses, however. I sincerely hope that gets a TON of attention by our coaching staff over the Bye. The offense is completely stacked... it shouldn't be able to be so easily stymied.

The defense is just opportunistic hot garbage.

Oh, absolutely not.
Barring some freak mishap to whomever we end up playing that gift wraps a 'W' for us, we are a 1-and-Done team in the Playoffs. Guaranteed.

One and done is way better than 1-15.

Very fair assessment, Vers. And I agree with what you have said.

IMO our weaknesses are on the D. No surprise. We are weak at safety, particularly at free safety. Harrison has been our brightest spot here, and props to Berry for getting him.

Also very weak at LB. A lot has been said at how Woods' system does not place a high value on LB. After 8 games, I fully believe that.

Addressing these two positions with proven vets this off-season, as well as in the draft, would do wonders for this team.

Outside of that, I think kick coverage and general depth are weaknesses as well.

To me, strengths are the skill positions on offense, the OL (when healthy), Garrett and Ward.

Our 5-3 record does feel hallow - I was trying to describe it to someone else and could not quite get the right description. Hallow is perfect.

I do not share your optimism for the second half. While I agree we play some weak defenses, it seems like too many things have to go right in order for us to pull it off.

I think this is a year of growth. Learning how to win when we should without the excitement, learning how to hold a lead, learning how to come from behind.

I do think we are headed in the right direction.

Positives:

- Baker has progressed a bit IMO. He’s hitting checkdowns and going through progressions a little bit. He’s also managing games better.

- Garrett, barring an injury here, is a serious DPOY candidate

- Our OL has been pretty good. Wills has had a rough go of it, but the OL is a strength for us. It’s nice to see a QB with time.

- Chubb and Hunt provide a great due ... we need Chubb back in the worst way

- I think Stefanski has done an admirable job. He’s eliminated a lot of dumb penalties and we seem organized. Nice job for a rookie coach.

- 5-3 is a record I’ll take every season at this point.


Negatives

- Our defense is really, really bad. We’re fortunate to be 5-3 with that horrible cast of characters. The LBs and Ss are backup level at best.

- DL hasn’t been as good as we hoped. Larry O is a huge disappointment. Vernon, though he was good yesterday, really has been invisible.

- When we play good, physical teams ... we have no shot.

- Injuries have been a bummer

1 & done > 1-31

I am happy that it is November and the season is not lost with me already moving on to next years draft.

I wanted a competitive team and for the most part we have it.

It appears that we now have a front office that will be at least proficient at drafting talent. Which IMO has been the single biggest reason for our ineptitude of the last 20 years.

Delpits injury is definitely an issue as it will be a long time before we find out if he is the answer at safety.

I have lingering questions about Baker but when looking at all of the factors. He needs more time to figure it out. If we are having the same conversation next year at this time then it may be time to move on.

Raiders Game Exposes Harsh Reality of Browns Defense - It Stinks
Pete Smith

5 minutes ago
https://www.si.com/nfl/browns/browns-maven-features/cleveland-browns-defense-stinks

Going into the 2020 season, it was understood that the Cleveland Browns defense was going to be a work in progress largely dependent on the defensive line to hide the warts of the rest of the unit, but when that doesn't happen, the defense is simply awful.

The defensive line has not lived up to the hype for the second year in a row, save for Myles Garrett. He has singlehandedly been making up for a number of problems on the defense with his ability to cause turnovers and change games. But in a game against the Las Vegas Raiders where he only played 45.8 percent of snaps, it stuck out like a sore thumb when he wasn't on the field because the rest of the defense was truly abysmal.

The bye week comes at a good time and it might help heal some lingering injuries, but some of the trends on this team have been going on since the beginning of the season.

Olivier Vernon played well against the Raiders, recording two sacks and disrupting plays through the game. He won't be on the team in 2021.

Whether it's suffering in silence as he has in years past, gutting it out through injury, Larry Ogunjobi has been struggling as of late and he's going to be a free agent. Will he be back? Difficult to say. Coming out better after the bye will be critical.

Kevin Johnson is a solid corner and slot player. Free agent.

Malcolm Smith is the best linebacker on the team, despite really only being useful in coverage. Free agent.

B.J. Goodson has been okay? He's a free agent.

Mack Wilson might be the worst linebacker who has ever played for the Browns. He still has no idea what he's looking at when reading plays, can't shed a block to save his life and almost never makes a positive impact on the field.

According to PFF, Wilson is grading out at a 29.1 overall, 29.9 against the run and 35.7 in pass coverage in 166 snaps (I did not know PFF grades went this low). Amazingly, there is one linebacker grading out worse than Wilson in Elandon Roberts of the Miami Dolphins. On the plus side, Wilson has deflected one pass this season.

The Browns are missing rookie Jacob Phillips with a knee injury. They haven't put him on injured reserve, so maybe they hope he can be back after the bye. He'd have to thread an impressive needle to be worse than Wilson. The Browns also added Eiljah Lee off of waivers. Primarily signed to play special teams, he might be better than Wilson too.

It's amazing to think that Wilson was insulted at the idea that people were saying the Browns had the worst linebackers in the NFL entering the season. They wouldn't be if they simply took him off the field.

Andrew Sendejo isn't as bad as Wilson, because he's not Elandon Roberts, but he is similarly positioned relative to safeties, third to last. The problem for Sendejo is he has played 553 snaps this season, because the Browns have so little there with the injury to Grant Delpit before the season.

With two weeks before their next game, perhaps Sheldrick Redwine can wrest the starting job from Sendejo, but he has to tackle when he's in there. He's a massive upgrade in coverage, but he has to do more than throw a chicken wing at ball carriers.

As bad as free safety is, strong safety is a pleasant surprise. The addition of Ronnie Harrison has been great. He's under contract for next season and he adds so much to this defense, because he has pretty good range and his size can be a real asset in coverage against tight ends. For the low price of a fifth round pick, the Browns may have their starting strong safety for the foreseeable future and part of their defensive nucleus heading to the offseason.

The rest of that group includes Myles Garrett, Denzel Ward and Sheldon Richardson and with Richardson, it's with the understanding he's going to be inconsistent, because that's who he is. Adrian Clayborn will be back, which is good. The Browns should have Andrew Billings next year as a run stopping nose.

Maybe the Browns opt to re-sign some of these free agents, but unless they can get someone like Kevin Johnson to stay at a reasonable rate, they are probably better off letting them all walk and targeting players that fit what they are doing with a year of results to work from.

The good news is the Browns do have Myles Garrett, who is the best defensive player in football. And despite all of their problems, they are still 5-3. They will also be approaching the offseason with plenty of cap space and picks to acquire premium talent in addition to going in heavily on the defensive side of the ball in this year's NFL Draft.

They have Grant Delpit and Jacob Phillips, who have largely had their rookie seasons wiped out. If they come back healthy next year and fully recovered from the Achilles' in the case of Delpit (fingers crossed), that would be a big boost. Jordan Elliott is wearing down as happens to a rookie defensive tackle who plays with power. He should be better next year.

The defense is a train wreck at the moment, but the Browns will have any number of avenues to upgrade the unit. Continue to build up a young defensive line, add more pieces to the secondary and mix in more options at linebacker until they can find a few that can perform a limited role. If that happens and the offense grows, the Browns can be a contender next year.


​

Probably the worst thing in all of this is that Sendejo was the only Plan B behind Delpit.



And, I had no idea that Mack Wilson was THAT bad. It sounds like we could give up a 6th and 7th for pretty much any LBers out there and do better than what we have.

If we think we can get him motivated and playing at a high level, we absolutely should trade for Quinnen Williams if we can get him for like a 3rd.

yeah, Mack has been really bad, which sucks. We really need to acquire/draft at least 3 LBs lol

Are any of our LBs just poor fits for the D (especially the holdovers) or are they really that bad?

j/c:

I think when evaluating the team as a whole at the halfway point of the season, there are some positives, negatives, and some questions.

--I think Stefanski and Callahan have been huge plusses. Not sure about Woods. The team is more disciplined and we are taking advantage of some of our strengths and masking some of our weaknesses. Not sure how long that can last?

--The record is a positive.

--The blowouts and lack of physicality are negatives.

--I see us making the playoffs and having a good record, but I don't get the feeling we are a good team right now.

Moving forward, I think we need improved performances in the following areas. Quarterback, another WR to step-up and help partially fill the void of losing OBJ, LBers, Safeties, a 3rd corner [hopefully Greedy,] a block-eating DT, and we need to tougher both physically and mentally. I think some things will be answered on the field this year and we have to have a good off-season. If we can improve in those areas, we should be good to go for next year.

Everyone can see how bad our Defense is and the stats back it up. How much blame should Woods and his scheme get?

With the lions share of the attention in the off-season given to the O, I can see why the D is struggling.

I’m fine with where the team is now. I had them at 7 wins, and they should beat that.

The biggest problem I see with the LB group is we don't have "the guy."

The guy being the every down guy who can be Labowski's carpet and hold the room together. Goodson, up until the Raiders' game where he was tackling the RB forward for an extra 2-4 yards, is generally solid against the run and Smith is generally solid against the pass. But without the guy to play 95%+ of all downs and allowing us to bring in Goodson or Takitaki on running downs and Smith in more passing situations, it's just not going to work.

IMHO, the off-ball LB is over-rated only to the extent that the room of 6 or 7 guys really just needs "the one" to function properly, but when you don't have that guy, well...

The D is not remotely stacked with talent, and a decent amount of the talent we were counting on got hurt and never saw the field.

I mean, think about it... Taki & Wilson had to get healthy for our LBers to only suck this badly. We were worse. We've had a few guys like Philips flash, only to get injured and disappear as quickly as they showed up.

We are missing major contributors (or just not getting contribution from the guys that are there) at every level of the defense and the D simply does not have the depth to weather that the way the O does.

You can blame Woods if you feel like you need a single point of blame to rail against, or you can blame Berry, or you can blame Stefanski.... in the end, it doesn't change that the D is running a horse race with wooden ponies, and I don't think there is any scheme that can cover for that.

On a brighter note, I am pleased with how Ronnie Harrison has come in and solidified that SS/big-nickle role (though I'd still prefer him to just play the big nickle to help the underneath coverage and have Delpit as more of the SS guy going forward).
So we would need an actual Free Safety (I'm still OK with Redwine being the 4th safety).
I'm almost as worried about CB as far as 2021 and beyond. Even assuming we bring back either Mitchell or Johnson (probably Money Mitch), I'm not overly enthusiastic about relying on Greedy (it's not like he lit it up his rookie year before the never-ending injury). But DB's are DB's you take one every year regardless.

I was really hoping we'd go after a young DT in trade (this upcoming draft leaves a lot to be desired at DT) so we wouldn't have so many holes on D to try to fill in a draft and hopefully allow us to clean up thee middle of this bloody defense. I just don't see us paying to bring back Ogunjobi while still paying Richardson 13 million next year.

Overall mid-term grades:

Offense: C+ (getting better but still too inconsistent, we'll see whaat happens if Teller, Chubb and Hooper get back).

Defense: D (Garret is an A+, Ward is an A-, Money is a B- (as is Harrison and Richardson so far), The LBers are a D- all the way as are Ogunjobi and Vernon. Our two FA safeties are an F regardless of what curve you grade on and our "depth" across the defense is suspect at best.

We need to find that LBer, but good young LBers don't get traded unless they are on their 2nd contracts and there is a fire-sale and LBers are still often day two guys in the draft.

Same with safeties now that I think about it.

So I'm greedy and wanted a 1st round caliber DT for a 2nd round pick...it happens.