DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum AFC North News and Notes Continued

It's 8 months until our first game of 2022. Alot will happen between now and then not only with us but with our opponents so it's almost impossible to predict outcomes of games from now. However, as we all know, if we don't address our weaknesses properly, we could be seeing another year of < than a 10 win season. It's not the toughest schedule but it's not easy either. Just my .02.

I'll say one thing... looking back on the Chargers game is very different now that we saw where our D was at the end of the season.

This is the kind of pass we have shown that we cannot defend. In the slightest. Lamar does this to us all the time, and successfully.

I remember in the Chargers game them going for it late in the game on 4th down with the Browns leading. There was a pass interference called when the WR grabbed the Browns CB and drug him down on top of him. If that PI was not called the Browns win that game.

There were also 2 touchdowns in the second half where our DBs just didn't go to cover their best WR. Our secondary was a confused, pathetic mess.

Is this an example of the "whataboutism" that people talk about. Because if the Refs make the right and correct calls in the Browns vs Chargers game, the Browns win the game they had a double digit lead and got the ball back late in the game, in the other teams red zone in a game the Browns scored 42, so the Browns would have quickly gone up 17 ish, if the Referees did their job right!
(If the league wasn't butt hurt biased against Browns team success)

In the 8 months between now and the Browns opener. Can Somebody Coach Anthony Schwartz how to be a WR that might get near 599 yards on a season?
And Can somebody Coach Anthony Schwartz how to draw a pass intereference penalty? What is the point in his "speed" anyway!
Or can they just stop and move on.

No it's not. We lost the game by 5 points, and gifted them 14 in the second half because of hilariously blown assignments in our secondary. That terrible call (a fireable offense, IMO) was NOT the reason we lost.

Seriously... on one of those gifts, Mike Williams stopped and turned around to catch the ball, then turned back and ran into the endzone. That's how not-covered he was.

j/c...

So do we give mad props to Joe Woods? Or do we think - based on how good the coverage was - the D should have been more dominant in more games? Or a little bit of both?

They were horri-bad to start the year. That 'L' is on Woods (IMO), but so is the turnaround. That number, to me, is extra impressive because it has the first 1/4 of the year dragging it down.

We give props to Woods while wishing they'd all come together and gotten things rolling a lot sooner. They simply took a few too many weeks to gel and really understand what they were supposed to be doing.
I'd like to say that next year will be better, but next year is its own animal.

I still think we are going to need some pieces on D - an impact ILB would be nice, the DL is in flux based on free agents and injury. . . . but we are very nearly there.

Having a highly-rated defense while still having a losing record is the plan on how Woods is trying to run Mayfield out of town.

Woods had his work cut out for him. We had a lot of young and new blood in that secondary that never played together before. Newsome, LeCounte, Delpit, Williams, Hill and Johnson didn't even play for us the previous season. The "seasoned" vets were Ward, Harrison, Stewart and Green (who spent most of last year on the practice squad).

If that were the case, then more PT during preseason would've been the move, IMO. IIRC, they even said that practices were sufficient in getting them up to speed, and they didn't need to risk injury playing in PS. That mistake directly led to at least 2 losses (KC and Chargers). Woods and his D more than made up for this in the later half of the season, but I can only call it like I see it.

I think all in all the defense gelled nicely and was pretty good. My issue with the defense is that when we needed one play to make a stop on a key drive, they never/rarely made that stop.

Yep. The miscommunication and lack of chemistry was obvious early on.

It was said many times by many posters that with that many new pieces it would take time for the D to gel. There are contracts in place that limit the amount of time coaches can require players to practice.


It played out exactly the way realistic expectations thought it would. I know we suffered a losing season but trying to place blame on a very good defensive coordinator who really whipped this group into shape isn't the answer to any of it.

Who is saying this (not a rhetorical question, btw)? I blame Woods for those 2 losses. If a realistic expectation is for them to not be ready until they had a certain number of games under their belt, then higher than a 0% participation rate of defensive starters in preseason would've been warranted.

It appears to me that you said it and the math also says it. We have a record of 8-9. Two more wins would have given us a record of 10-7. That changes it from a losing season to a winning season.

Seeing some of these names is quite the spark of optimism. JOK looks like a stud in the making, Newsome was very good, Delphit flashed a lot, Ward had another quietly excellent season, Stewart played very solid when given opportunity. Greedy was a little inconsistent but showed some ability. Harrison and Johnson might have been the most disappointing out of the lot - I think another year and Johnson should bloom. Hope we can keep Clowney to complement MG on the other side.

I'm only blaming Woods and the D for those 2 losses (maybe there were additional, similar losses). There were also games we lost in spite of the defense where I blame KS, Baker, etc.

Maybe a way to frame what I'm saying is to also point out that we are NOT a playoff caliber team right now, whether or not we win those 2 games, and that is in spite of the D.

I will repeat, with two more wins we would have had a winning season and not a losing season. You 'directly blame" those two losses on Woods. And while you now say "we were not a playoff caliber team", which I agree with BTW, with those two wins we would have made the playoffs. It is what it is.

2 more wins would've put us in the playoffs, yes. The D is responsible for 2 losses that should've been wins. The O is also responsible for several (for argument's sake, I'll limit it to the most recent Pitt game and the Ravens loss) losses that should've been wins.

So yes, the D is to blame for those two losses. No, the D is not to blame for the losing season.

So if those two losses would have been two wins we would not have had a winning season and made the playoffs?

If you want to be technical then yes, but then you also have to figure out how many games the D won that the O did not.

Actually I have given the D credit for some time now. I think the calls we see for Woods job are stupid. If it had been me making the post blaming the D for those two losses I would have given them the credit for the wins as well. But I didn't make the post. It's why I was surprised the way the post was framed.

Who is calling for Woods' job? Honestly, which posters?

As for blaming the D for the losses and crediting them for when they played well enough to win (but didn't due to the O)... that's exactly what I did.

If any 2 losses had been wins (ex. the Baltimore game where the D caused 4 turnovers, or the Pitt or Raiders game where O only scored 14) then we would've had a winning season. I'm not sure how many other ways I could (or should) explain a very simple concept.

You seem hell bent on putting words in my mouth regarding our D.

Actually, if any 1 loss had been a win, we would've had a winning season.

Geez

Are we sure we are talking about the D?

My thinking is it might be punts and kicks. We were pretty solid in that area.