DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2015 NFL Season Looking Back: Browns 10 Jets 31 Postgame thoughts

First, did we really have a shot once McCown went down? The backup QB doesn't even really practice game week in the NFL.

O-Line played like an average OL. If our OL is average, we don't have a shot.

RBs played like crap. Crow on that chop block was so dumb. Neither he nor Duke took advantage of holes the few times they opened up. Shaun Draughn was about as effective in pass protection as an 8 year old girl. Draughn is also too slow to be a kick returner.

Like what I saw of Malcolm Johnson catching the ball, but I didn't pay enough attention to him trying to block.

Cut Dray. Seriously. What is the point of him?

Outside of Hartline's incredible catch and Benji breaking free, I was pretty disappointed in the WR play. Gabriel dropping that 4th down pass was a bummer... though IIRC that was after the game was out of reach for practical purposes. Too many drops, though from both WRs and TEs. The WR guys we had out there are supposed to be out there because they get open all the time.

Way, way, way too many (12) penalties. So deflating. They all seemed to wipe out positive plays, too.

Somehow, Danny Shelton and Jamie Meder didn't fix our inability to stop the run.

No pass rush, whatsoever. Shocker.

Contain was terrible.

Haden was awful. One of his worst games in the NFL. I fully expected him to shut Marshall down, but instead he just got worked over.

Gipson was so bad. I don't getthe praise for him from today. Twice our defensive alignment put him in perfect position to end drives in the red zone, and the first time he picks the ball and gets stripped and the second time he falls asleep, lets the slot receiver run right behind him for an easy touchdown. Both drives he should have ended, both turned into TDs for the Jets. He was decent in man coverage.

Poyer showed some bright spots but seemed to be a little late a few times.

Whitner looked too slow out there, and just shoving his shoulder into people. I wonder if this is the year he falls off that cliff. I think Campbell will have to play major minutes if that's a sample of what we're going to get.

What is the point of Barkevious Mingo?

Robertson was decent I guess.

I didn't notice Kirksey all game.

Nice balls from Coons to hit 38, 43, 48 yard extra points in his first action in the NFL... definitely could have messed with his head, but he acquitted himself well.

If I'm looking for a positive here, it's only that the last time our season opened with our starter getting knocked out in the first half and us losing by 3+ TDs, we went 10-6 on the season. Here's to hoping, I guess.

Reply to Swish:

I was excited for him too. He did pretty good. He had a bunch of good plays called back for penalties. I would rather see him play than McCown. We know McCown will only do average. JM's ceiling is unknown at this point.

Yes he was. Though I think he would have taken the Jets job anyway. Chan Gailey was his OC in Buffalo when he played moderately well.... Besides, who wants to come here? McCown wanted out so bad he made certain he got himself concussed. Cha Ching. Take the money and run. Johnny won't last long taking shots like he was either.

I think Farmer and Pettine better plan on having at LEAST 3 QB's on the roster at all times, and 4 or 5 wouldn't be outrageous. We're going to go through them quickly if we keep playing like this.

I think the guy we should have went after was Foles. But I guess he's not good enough to "Play like a Brown". Rams did beat the Seahawks today however.....

I'm also curious about this. J. Sheard isn't good enough to play on this defense. But he's good enough to start for the Patriots?


In the preseason we blitzed a corner on occasion, sent a safety here and there. We got mildly creative with our pass pressure. I didn't see much if any of that today. Passing downs we'd bring another rusher or two. But no real surprises. Basic vanilla defense. No surprises, no innovation.... What is up with that?

j/c

So the Jets had 179 yards passing today, seemed like 175 came against Haden.... He just had a lousy, lousy day. Our top corner just got schooled big time. So depressing.

The run D, what a major disappointment.

The O-line, what the heck was that? They all sucked, Thomas included. He let his guy run around him, and blind side JM for a fumble. Announcers said it was Johnny's fault, I bet he was thinking his all pro left tackle wouldn't let him down. What really pisses me off is I watched the Thursday night game, Brady had all day back there- go look at what New England started... rookies and young guys. With the investment we have in our o-line, the qb should have a clean jersey and the running back shouldn't be getting stuffed two yards behind the line of scrimmage. Without a running game, this offense is screwed.

I would like to just go ahead and start Manziel next week. Give him a week with the ones, see what happens. He looks like he has made improvement, might as well see what we have in him.

I hope Bowe shows up as well, others want to write him off but we have 9 million in him. Need to put him on the field and see what kind of return we can get out of him.

I don't know if Manziel is the future of the team, but I do think our highest ceiling is with him at QB.

See, I didn't think that was Thomas' fault. Johnny held the ball too long then ran to the right. Thomas did his job, the guy speed rushed around him, and if Johnny stayed where he was, that Jets player would have been out of position.

Manziel kind of ran into that one.


But..... I agree, without the running game, offense is screwed. The team is centered around that, and we made no effort to get a legit RB. I wonder if we offered Deangelo Williams anything. He'd be a decent upgrade to what we have. No doubt about it.



This I agree with. We could really use Bowe this week

We changed schemes. Two years ago our line wasn't very good. Especially at run blocking. After the Richardson trade we couldn't run the ball at ALL. Period. Chud is fired and we hire Shanahan. What is he known for? Running the ball. Zone blocking.... And our guys took to it like fish to water. Yeah they had some problems after Mack went down, but in general our line played pretty good last year. Our backs played pretty well last year. The scheme suited our line and it suited our running backs. Now we're running something else. Flip is running his offense. His system. One of two things is now true. Either our guys are in the process of learning the new scheme and will eventually gel into a better product. Or perhaps some of our guys that were well suited for last years scheme are NOT well suited for this years system. Whatever that is. Maybe Crowell is a decent back in Shanahans scheme but not so hot in our new offense.... Wouldn't be the first back to leave the Shanahan system and not pan out....

Manziel was pretty bad, no run game, and the defense was atrocious. It's going to be a long year.

I'd feel a lot better about that if he was bigger. I wish he would have put on about 20 pounds of muscle in the off season. He lasted less than two games last year. He's been hurt already this year. If they want to keep him alive they have got to keep him in the pocket. Or design roll outs and waggles where it's controlled. The WCO is rife with those kinds of plays. If there's nothing open, throw the ball away. And we DAMNED sure need to run the football. A pass happy Browns team is a doomed Browns team. Peace

One last thought..... perhaps Farmer and Pettine should sign a couple back up QB's this week. Hartline was Johnny's back up. Now THAT would have been hilarious to see.... How many picks can one WR throw in a game? The Browns were one hit away from finding out.....

A wise GM would have kept Pryor on the team as an added bonus. He already knows the offense. Cut a TE and still they could have picked up Turbin, the guy who won't play till next month.

I hope McCown realizes now just what his recklessness costs the team. The first drive was beautiful. Clutch third down conversions. He was accurate and making good pre and post snap reads. I don't know if it's just been so long since he's been "the guy" that he forgot how important it is to see the next snap or just has so much urgency that he's trying to make too much happen. The first hit he took on third down should have been the wake-up call. But at least he wanted it. No one else played with anywhere near that fire.

Our running backs have poor vision. I don't think the run blocking was as bad as indicated. But there were multiple times both Johnson and Crow cut back against the play design (the worst when Johnson cut back instead of following his escort in Joe Thomas to the outside before slamming into traffic). They didn't run outside of their lead blocks' hips, choosing the opposite often,

Manziel was smarter with his body than McCown (he at least seems to be aware of when is a good time to slide).

Play design was good. Things just weren't properly executed. That third and nineteen TD pass caused just enough confusion with the trips to the right. The Jets thought they had disguised their coverage and blitzed, but it left the deep safety to the left in man while the other had to hurry out of the box too late.

Donte Whitner: What's the point of a safety who whiffs on tackles in run support and can't cover? Worst showing I've ever seen out of him. It's as if he forgot form entirely when he attempted to tackle.

Barnidge I thought had a good game. He blocked admirably (not world-beater, but did well on a trap in the opposite direction he was sent in motion) EDIT: Needed him to come down with the ball slightly behind him in the third quarter. It killed the drive and went through his hands. Ugh.

I'm more upset about not recovering the aborted snap than I am Gipson getting stripped on the INT.

Robertson > Kirksey.

Hartline's circus catch: the intended target was Barnidge, lol. After the TD toss, Manziel wasn't accurate enough. Missing Hawkins in the corner of the endzone on second and goal was a huge missed opportunity.

Chris Owusu would be our number one receiver. Yikes.

We need to buy a pass rush since we can't draft pass rushers to save our lives. That's the biggest problem with the defense (along with stopping the run). We have no one who can win a one-on-one and get to the QB in three seconds.

Dray was supposed to be "unspectacular athlete with gorilla glue hands" guy. Instead, he's just unspectacular if not outright bad.

Manziel's pick: Yes, there was illegal contact or a hold there. But that ball needs placed more towards the outside and with VELOCITY. I can't really defend it beyond that. It was floated too trustingly, even though I'd like to also see Hartline fight more for the ball.

There was no reason for Pett not to challenge Marshall's catch. Boneheaded indecision.

Mingo is great in coverage. Made an excellent open field tackle out in the flat. But he gets pushed around like a rag doll on those off tackle runs.

Manziel's pocket awareness needs more improvement. He did a lot of things I liked today, but if McCown is cleared, he's still the better guy right now. If you're trying to win the next game, it's McCown. That should be the goal.

gosh, how bad was (is) donte whitner? I still can't get over how slow he appears on the field.

terrible drop by dray .... terrible miss by Johnny to Hawkins in the endzone ... where was Kruger? .. why no Xavier Cooper (our most disruptive DL in the preseason?) ... so many angry thoughts

I mentioned in the "excited" thread that I really wasn't excited about the season. Normally, I can't sleep before the first game of the season. That didn't happen Saturday night but I did find myself getting excited as the game neared. And I was screaming after the Manziel to Benjamin TD. My daughter started crying because she thought I was yelling because I was mad. LOL.

Now I just feel like crap. The Browns lost. I drank a lot of beer and my fantasy football team got crushed. I do this every year. And every Monday I feel like crap. It's such a non productive use of my time and life is too short to put so much time into something that makes you feel so unhappy and miserable.

It's not that the Browns lost. It's the way they lost. No desire. It's the way Pettine appeared so completely lost and clueless and embarrassed in his presser. I didn't expect a lot of wins. But I expected to be competitive.

Honestly, I just feel broken. Normally by Wednesday of each week I would start to get excited again for the upcoming game no matter the outcome of the previous week. I am pretty sure that won't happen this week. It's likely I'll watch the game, but I am just finding it hard to continue to come up with the point of it all. If something you love never makes you happy, why do it?

Yeah, I just feel kind of broken.

x2

plus we continuously were running to the short side. If you're going to run off tackle it's ideal to run to the wide side (and to the LEFT once and a while ... you know, where our three pro bowlers are?!)

why would we run on the side with our three pro bowlers when we have mitchell schwartz to lead the way?

Post game thoughts:

Our damn team really sucked the life outta me yesterday. Like everybody else, I was very disappointed. I guess we should be use to that feeling by now.

I wasn't even that excited about the other games that day because we played so badly.

...The Factory of Sadness continues...

I agree. Last year Johnny was overwhelmed and fighting an addiction problem, and fighting a ego problem. This year I think things are different. Yesterday we saw some spark in the guy...the stuff we saw at A&M and the stuff that got him drafted.

I say play him. My only real concern is the elbow. It would have been better had he had another few weeks of limited duty. Just ice him down after games and practice. The good thing is now that he season is underway, he won't be throwing as much. I know he will have to throw in practice, and maybe 30-40 times a game, but we can limit the number of throws in practice.

j/c:

Offensive line: Pass Pro was ok, Run blocking was horrendous.
Defensive line: No pressure and no ability to stop the run.

I don't think I'm as high on Johnny's performance last night as others. I thought he played poorly. Very inaccurate throwing behind receivers and never took care of the ball. I get that be barely threw these past few weeks and wasn't taking reps this week but I was still underwhelmed.

Anyone remember that piss poor attempted tackle by Whitner in the end zone? Just threw a shoulder at him at the RB on 2yd line---a complete and utter joke. Most overrated person on this team.

Brandon Marshall owned Haden.

Travis Benjamin has really blossomed into a legit WR for us. I like Hartine's catch too, although I don't think he was the intended target.

Not that he would have made a difference but what happened to Soloman? Next thing I notice is the guy is out for the remainder of the game?

I liked the play of our ILBs. Thought they both played well (Dansby and Kirksey)

Kruger was no where to be found most of the game.

Andy Lee had a great game. Some booming punts. (I was going to put this first but that would have been really sad highlighting a punter as a introduction)

Ugh. What a horrible 2nd half.

Yes! Hartline's catch freakin' rocked:



I would add, "Now THAT'S how you win games!" but... you know...

Haven't read the other replies yet, wanted to include mine without the taint. Also, afraid there will be rampant optimism and that will just tick me off more.

Benji looked good. Actually looked good all preseason and we had people who could not wait to dump him to make room for Lenz. Which team won the bidding war for Lenz the very second we released him? I forget, will need to look that up.

I will give Farmer props for trading for the punter. He is a stud and we will need him this year. I'm afraid his leg will fall off before the end of the season.

I was impressed that our kicker nailed a 48 yard extra point. Of course, it was impressive that we had 15 yards in penalties to set up an extra point that long.

My other thoughts:

- Our elite, top 5 OL was ineffective. RBs couldn't run and it seems our QBs were under duress. Maybe they were skittish. Whatever, it doesn't matter. QB and RB are skill positions and we don't value those.

- Our elite, top 10 defense ... LOL. They forced a couple punts, I think. Still not tackling and just hitting the ball carrier. Not wrapping up always works. Containment is a myth.

- TEs. they dropped, what, 4 passes? 3? 5? The only one who showed anything in preseason didn't even see the field. I would dump those other 3 for Winn, Pryor and the first out-of-work TE who makes it to Berea.

- Turnovers. Took care of the ball really well. We had one takeaway, and held it for almost 3 seconds.

- Penalties. Lump this in with the turnovers and poor tackling and we had ourselves a clinic on fundamentals. the team look unprepared, and also like they had a thousand other things they would rather be doing.

- We were dominated and embarrassed by a team that is not supposed to be good. They aren't good but light years beyond us.

- My prediction in Swish's thread was 4-12. I had no idea that I was drinking the kool-aid. After watching the crap-fest yesterday, I will be surprised if we win 2.

I just don't care all that much. I thought I'd be upset. I tried to be upset. But it just doesn't matter any more.

It would have been a different game had McCown not been sent to the locker room after that shot to the head. Any other QB in the league getting hit like that would have at least drawn a penalty.

I'm not blaming Manziel for the loss. I thought he looked much better than I expected. This loss was a total team effort.

I agree the game would've been different if McCown wasn't injured, but he was, doing a stupid stupid thing.

Also no flag would ever be thrown since he was a runner at that point, you can hit runners helmet to helmet all you want.

The offense comes as no surprise. We had a bottom 5 offense last year and did nothing to fix QB, patched WR with Elmer's glue and scotch tape, are starting last year's backups at TE and our running game is a bunch of "eh" guys. It doesn't help that the OL didn't have a great game either but we're built to be terrible there and that is by Farmer's design.

What really killed me was how bad our defense played given the heavy investment Farmer made in them... I thought after ignoring our offense in the draft, our run defense was supposed to be fixed? I thought we were a Top 10 unit that was going to win games on the back of our defense.

I thought we were a 4 win team heading into the season but if our defense is anything like it showed yesterday, we may actually be worse.

Agreed ... who could we beat?

Tennessee .... that's a stretch now
Oakland .... MAYBE if Carr is out for a while here
San Fransicso .... they're still probably better
Cincinnati .... hope to split?


That about does it IMO

My other postgame thought is that we almost have to look better next week, don't we? Please... somebody tell me it will get better.

I don't even have the energy to dissect what I saw, every unit looked poor.

j/c

My post game thoughts were exactly this: I hate this team... I have a raging headache.

I just hope it's a forum wide consensus that we need to start drafting "sexy picks" like skill position players and LBs. If you want to build in the trenches that's fine, but you can't do it at the expense of other positions which is what we've clearly done. It hasn't even really paid off which is the sad thing.

watching other teams compared to ours is pretty disgusting to be honest.

other teams' QBs/WRs/TEs are LIGHT YEARS ahead of the piling crap that we witness. The NFL is basically a glorified arena league right now and we're scoring 10 ppg

Well, this year, you'll have a Tuesday to experience all those emotions.

Man did we ever suck yesterday, flat out laid an egg. OL play, DL play... dropped balls, stupid penalties prior up the snap.

I saw the game in bits and pieces - when Petine didn't challenge the Marshall catch, I was totally pissed off. The coaches were garbage, too.

Here's the best thing about that debacle: it's over and hopefully our guys get mad at themselves and bounce back big time at home next week. I haven't given up yet, but a couple more crapfests like that will have me paying attention to the Toronto Maple Leafs (and they're gonna suck, too).

I saw our Run D suck, STILL.

I saw Fitzpatrick throw with precision like he never has before.

I saw our O-Line still not very good at run blocking

I saw McCown drive then do stupid crap.

I saw Manziel also make some boneheaded choices.


All in all, a dismal showing as a team.

The only bright side is that Duke Johnson seemed to have some vision, Manziel is night and day better than last year (which wouldn't take much),
and the water boy was on spot during time-outs.

We just need to start drafting guys that can play regardless of what position they play, guys that can make an impact. Good first and second round guys find a way to impact the game, bad first and second round guys find their way to Cleveland.

I saw a team that totally lost focus. There was zero intensity. They were completely undisciplined as evidenced by the multitude of penalties. Their number one focus was to run the ball, so we were told. We failed miserably at that. Our strength was to be the defense. Yet it was most certainly not.

I'm not so surprised that we lost. But the way we lost was disgusting.

Not with this Oline it's never going to happen with our roster. We just don't have the guns up front and we are still lacking depth on both sides of the ball. Good scheme or bad having just one or two reliable olinemen/dlinemen isn't cutting it.