DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2023 NFL Season Looking Back: Browns 3 Ravens 28 How to Win

This is a pretty important game for both teams. The winner has a big advantage in the division/playoff race ... the loser is a bit more challenged.

What do we have to do to give us the best chance to win? A few of my thoughts:

- Keep Lamar in the pocket and stay disciplined with rush lanes
- Take away Andrews and Flowers as best we can ... those guys are his go-to dudes
- Avoid any splash plays for them defensively (just like I said against Pittsburgh) .. they thrive on turnovers, sacks, etc. Just take care of it.
- Special teams are a hidden battle against Baltimore .. Harbaugh's specialty. We gotta win the field position and penalty battle on STs

On Defence:

Keeping Lamar in the pocket is a good starting point.
Stay out of the penalty box, don’t give them free plays. Our D needs to do what they’ve been doing. I know it’s three games in but how awesome is it that our defence is killing it?

On Offence: I don’t know their strengths on d, but limit turnovers, let DW play ball but put this game in the hands of our d. DW and Amari are developing chemistry so I’d like to see that continue.

A poster posted about how he was listening to the radio

And no one on the sports shows or talking heads were mentioning the Browns

Talking about the Cowboys and the Kelce / Swift thing

I'm happy for that, no more believing in the press hype

That looks great on paper

The last few seasons the press hype had the Browns walking away with winning divisional championships

never happened They bought in to it and it showed

less the talk the more this team looks better

Tune out the outside noise

Hopefully soon the question will be

How can the Ravens beat the Browns ?!

The team is believing in themselves

That's how they win !

Play well. No turnovers against us.

On the flip side, imagine what the ravens are thinking about how to play O against this d.

With our D, playing the field position game in important. I think Stefanski is just starting to understand this...it's a new concept in Cleveland. I don't want to hear booing if we opt to punt rather than go for it on 4th and 1 or try a 53 yard FG. Keeping a game down at their end of the field is never a bad thing.

Keep them punting from their 18 and you keep getting the ball on your 45. That generally increases your win odds.

After that, the normal stuff. Don't fumble at the wrong time. Don't throw a pick at the wrong time. Protecting the ball is always a key. No dead ball penalties. Action penalties are going to happen. There is no excuse for pre-snap or dead ball penalties. That is just being stupid.

If we don't beat ourselves, we should be able to beat them up at home.

I agree Peen .. field position in these close games is paramount. Our defense is a weapon and teams will not want to be pinned back

I think this is going to be our defense's first real test. I hate sounding like this, but I'm emotionally preparing myself for this game to take a little of the shine off of our D. Lamar is a different cat and will require a different approach. Dline has to be more disciplined and they need to be more setting up big plays for the LBs and secondary. Our (thus far) exemplary tackling will be challenged.

IMO, another stellar defensive performance will have our secondary and LBs making big plays. I don't expect a huge stat line for Garrett and co. but they're going to play a huge part in containing Lamar's scrambling.


Honestly, offense just needs to not do what it did vs Pittsburgh. I would expect a similar defensive strategy to be deployed against us. We need to start with easy plays and getting the ball into our playmaker's hands in space and start building offensive momentum that way. Stay disciplined in terms of running the ball, even when it doesn't work early.

Our offense is still a work in progress. We need to limit the Ravens offense early to allow our O to gain momentum. Offense needs to start with small positive plays and build on those. Stupid decisions early on can't happen.

If we overpursue in trying to hit/sack Lamar, that's going to bite us in the butt. I think they're hoping we are going to try to accomplish the same thing we did against the likes of Burrow, Pickett, and Tannehill.

I agree. I expect them to use our aggressiveness against us. Gotta stay disciplined in this one

I worry about over aggressiveness in theory. I think we might overwhelm their depleted/beaten up roster in reality. There is always the chance of Lamar going Lamar, but we've had lots of bodies around the QB so far. Its not just Myles in the backfield by himself any more.

We can't give them any cheap coverage busts in the back end, but I think we need to stick to the "new" aggressive identity in the front 7.

It might just be me but I don't see this as all that complicated. The answer is to do what we did last week. For me each games is a chess match. In a chess match to have the choice to attack or defend. To force your opponent to react to your moves or for them to force you to defend against theirs. It's a question of will. It's a question of dictating the flow of the game. It must be the Browns who dictate that flow.

While it's true that DW has shown a natural chemistry with Coop, what we saw last week was an ability to spread the ball around a little more. We saw DPJ get 3 receptions, Moore with 9, Njoku with 4, Hunt with 2 and Ford with 2 including the TD. This shows that the Ravens D can't sleep on any of them. I believe what we are seeing is a gradual maturation process with this O. If that process continues it will be hard for any D, including the Ravens to stop all elements of such an offense. The only thing I would say that may need to change a bit is DW holding the ball thinking somehow he can save every play. My hope is that in more of these situations he will be able to throw the ball away or not create a big loss on some of the sacks when he is under pressure. He doesn't need to try and play the role of hero on every down, just the role of QB.

On ST's we have a kicker who can actually kick now. That heavily mitigates the biggest issue the Browns have had in recent years.

The defense is a unit that takes care of itself. From what I have seen the Browns can not only apply pressure from the edges, but from the interior of the DL as well. To contain Lamar they can not lose outside contain or let their OL trap the interior of the DL giving Lamar inside lanes up the middle to run through. If I have one concern that would be it. The legs of Lamar more than his arm.

As with most division games I expect this one to be closer than it actually appears to be on . But if the Browns don't panic or try to get too cute, it should be a W.

Stay the course.

Zac Jackson
@AkronJackson
·
21m
Greg Newsome will be back to practice today.

Browns pre-practice injury update: The following players will not practice today due to injury

Joel Bitonio (rest, ankle)
Kareem Hunt (ribs, groin)

Bitonio, Garrett and Cooper generally get Wednesday off.

good to get Newsome back

As a chess player, I agree. You have to adjust.

That said, if you control the center of the board, your chances of winning go up greatly..

I was thinking about this some, and I wouldn't be surprised if Schwartz uses 5 DL fairly frequently. Lamar is such a unique talent at QB with his legs.

I know he’s got some skills but I’m not very worried about Lamar. I do believe, however, that Lamar is worrying about us because we are getting after QBs. Teams can barely get two consecutive first downs against this defence.
Stay away from turnovers, stay in our lanes and we’ll be tough to beat.

I think this is going to be an absolute blood bath. I think both teams really see this game as a critical dominance moment. Both defenses will be very physical, very violent this game, possibly a lot of penalties, lots of chippiness and borderline cheap shots. It’s going to come down to turnovers and which offense can weather the storm. I frankly don’t have a ton of faith seeing how Watson fell apart in Pitt. Baltimore is going to take the same tack, create outright chaos and mayhem, be in our backfield all day, flush him out and get us to lose composure. I don’t think they fear his fear. This is going to be a critical coaching week, getting them prepared for what’s going to be a total slugfest. Callahan is gonna have to scheme the hell out of the Oline. They know our run game is next to kaput, they’re going to try to force us to put it on Watson’s back.

I agree. I think we are very fortunate to have a bye week between Baltimore and SF ... probably the two biggest physical tests

It is a bad break for us that they are getting two big OL back

Expect brutality for all the line play. Roll Watson more often, and let him target some crossing routes and seams. Nobody can be strong every direction at once. Avoid so much side to side offense we have failed to establish, and go after them straight up. DW should be running more often, rather than freezing back there. Not every play demands extension. Move the sticks! Long passes when you need a yard or two isn't wise or tricky. Kick the FG's.

Just a reminder I try to remember. It's Ratbird Week. Raise a toast to Ravenkiller. Get your game face on!

need our LB's to make sure to take a wide angle and force Lamar to scramble inside if he takes off. None of their receivers scare me except Andrews.

Ran the ball, and defended the Pass and they got a win against Tampa Bay in 2022

Ran the Ball and defended the Pass and they got a win against the bengals in the opener in 23'

... It may work again,

on O, run the ball,
on D, defend the Pass,

... and go from there.

THis is exactly the type of team they brought JOK in for... he's fast and can spy on Lamar all game... Totally expect his name to get called a lot as the edge chases Lamar out of the pocket.

Jumped on ravens reddit and no one is talking about Ford. People thinking Hunt is the guy...

JOK and Delpit. I have been so impressed with Delpit's tackling.

I agree ... both of them have had a nice start to the year

A better scheme for them to play in and a better DC is probably the reason for much better results.

yeah, just as we all suspected .. Woods was not a good DC

No he wasn’t. We probably lost 3 games last season directly because of him and his late game play calls.

It is definitely night and day. It does make me wonder how he and Schwartz must differ things so much. The players seem to understand their roles and coverage so much better this year than last, but Schwartz' scheme doesn't seem any less complicated from our point of view. Hell, he's lined up Myles all over the defense. Even puts Myles in motion apparently (still my favorite memory of the season so far).

with Watson injured, things offensively need to change now. It's gotta be a low scoring, ugly type win

Sounds like the defense has a bit more freedom as well.. Schwartz just letting guys play.

The myles motioning.. and then having a double team following him.. sounded like it was Myles's idea. Saw what they were doing... so he took advantage of the situation.

J/C

It's easier to move Myles around when you have people to play in his usual spot that are actually good. Coverage also gets simpler when the QB can't sit comfortably holding the ball in the pocket.

If Woods had tried to do this last year, I don't think it would have worked the same. We added a lot of new talent up front.

I'm not saying Woods was great (he wasn't), but he wasn't working with the same pieces. Teams could focus on Myles and didn't have a ton else to worry about.

Having good players is a rather important component of team/coordinator success.

As they say, we've got the horses now. We don't have to try to "hide" players now. In a lot of ways, we can kind of just let them all run. There still has to be some coordination, but it's easier to get a racehorse to run in the right direction than it is to win a race with a plow horse.

We’ll see. The limited look I got at DTR tells me he can move the O. I still think Watson will play.

I think there's a lot of validity to the points you made. Teams were gashing us right up the middle and opposition QB's had a lot more time to get comfortable as a result. As you said, we didn't have the horses to combat that. But I think it also goes deeper than that. The LB'er's looked poor as a group. It seems by everything I've seen it was due to the fact that they had specific assignments and portions of the field as their responsibility and weren't given nearly the freedom to read and react. Now we can see when their best skill sets are capitalized on it looks like someone else is filling those uniforms.

Then you have a secondary who was drafted that had extensive skill sets in man coverage being used much more in a zone. That never made any sense to me.

Sometimes a DC can have a good scheme. He can have some players that are talented. However, if he can't build a scheme that compliments the talents of his players, rather than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole it will create a situation that looks like a failure on the field. I think that's a big part of what we saw with Woods.

I believe what we are seeing now is a DC who can diagnose the best skill sets of his players and design that D scheme to accentuate their talent to the very best of its ability. That separates a decent DC from a great DC. I'm not a guy who just sits back and yells Woods sucks. What I will say is that I think he lacked the ability to adjust his scheme to best utilize the skill set of his players.

All that can be true. I'm just not sure there was a scheme that Woods could have used with those players that would have worked.

When you get whooped in the trenches, you're going to get whooped on defense in general.

I think Woods played zone because he knew he'd need the secondary to make tackles. In zone corners face the ball. In man, they frequently have their backs to the ball. If your front 7 is getting things done, it's not an issue. If the front 7 isn't....

I was banking on this anyway. Low scoring defensive slug fest. Lots of ugly offense to go around.

Hopeful you are not counting mop up time last week, because he did not throw a pass.