🏈🏈Official Game Day Thread NE Pats vs Your Cleveland Browns🏈🏈

[tiamat63]

5 hours ago, jrb12711 said:

I think my concern is that guys we've seen play decent ball have seemingly regressed at an alarming rate. 

 Denzel has had a rough start to the year and one of the things I don't like that Woods' does is not getting him involved at the nickel more.  His elite lateral movement is pretty ideal to taking away, what is sometimes, an offenses best weapon - slot receiver.   Instead he's drawn some unfavorable matchups outside and especially this season, taking on some of the bigger bodies on schedule.  The coverage busts seem to have been minimized a great deal, but those are still fresh in the mind.  Otherwise I think we'd have a more favorable impression of Ward's 2022.

 Newsome is a 2nd year CB who played pretty well last season.  But the phrase 'sophomore slump' isn't a cliche'.   

 Emerson is a 3rd round rookie and has netted some nice early returns.  But he's still a rookie playing the 2nd hardest position in football.

Johnny J is Johnny J.  He's a swiss army knife and that's good, but he isn't great at anything.  I've spoken about the log jam of redundancy in terms of skill set among on safeties.  It can be both a positive and a negative.  As we don't have any real contrasting and complimentary abilities in this group.   Positive because they can all fill each others roles on any given assignment, sometimes that means you're able to disguise coverages a bit better based on where personnel is aligning.   Negative because, (best example I can give) if I'm reading single high and have concepts to really stress that middle fielder, none of my 3 safeties are particularly great at such a role.  

 

 Delpit is a 1st year starter in an expanded role.  And you're seeing some of the issues with that. First it was communication, now it's things like leverage, depth and technique.   Things he was rather unpolished with at LSU and missed a vital rookie season to get up to NFL speed.    You play golf? Ever worry so much about visualizing the shot and worrying about your swing speed that you fuck your hands up and slice the ball?  Similar type of problem there.

 Harrison is also Harrison.  He's a DB with obvious limitations on how he can be deployed, especially playing back on a hash.  

 

I can't really think of anyone else who might be labeled as 'regressing'...?    Phillips was never any good and was a late round pick.  Tommy Togiai was always a tweener that graded as a backup last season.   Jordan Elliot was much of the same, and the coaching staff having him put on weight to possibly better fill his role has only diminished his burst.   Taki has remained much the same player he was since year 2, who else is there?  Young JoK is a heat seeking missile against the run but gets lost in coverage quite a bit relying too much on his athletic ability.  There's a reason he has very few off-ball linebacker snaps on passing downs this season.  

 

 Team defense was 11th in DVOA last year.  But going back over the schedule, aside from the 1st half at the Chiefs house, only really enjoyed success against teams that were offensively limited to begin with.   KC exposed the linebackers, the Pats exposed the IDL, and the Bolts exposed our depth and talent at corner.   Only the latter of the 3 has shown some improvement since week 2, because they started clearing up the communication issues.

 

 Truth be told, this defense is a bit of a paper tiger because the glue that holds the group together (LB's) and the foundation (IDL) hasn't been good in 5-6 years.  Honestly, probably longer.   Things started falling apart with that group under Jim O'Neil.   And believe me, when a coach deserves to lose his job, I'll be the first person to say it.

 

 Hue should have never gotten to 2018.  I can never forget him calling empty with Kizer as your QB, Joe Thomas out hurt and being on your own 2 yard line against the Ravens in a 1 score game.   If I was Jimmy Haslam I would have fired you in the tunnel after the game.

 Jim O' Neil should have been fired after the 2014 season. Their base E-N-T 2 gap scheme did NOT work with our personnel and they took effective role players like Rubin, Huges and Billy Winn and ruined their ability by asking them to further bulk up and 2 gap.  

 So trust me, when coaches should go, I see it and provide good reasons before most anyone.    

Stef has no business being let go.

Woods... I'm on the fence with.  Mostly because this franchise will need a sacrificial lamb to silence the fans.  

 

  

 

5 hours ago, jrb12711 said:

But man, it just feels like dudes like Newsome, JOK, Delpit etc have regressed or fallen into something that's made them play bad football. Is it really that these guys are being figured out? Walker being the communicator hurting that much? Or what I tend to think that these dudes from a scheme perspective are being set up to fail. Delpit on that late end around TD wasn't even in the same hemisphere. I just have a very hard time thinking this team with a lot of the same guys just got this alarmingly worse. 

 

 See above about Newsome, JoK and Delpit.     Further re: Delpit. He is INCREDIBLY aggressive underneath and attacking downhill.   So much that misdirection and coverage from playing on a back hash is a liability for him.  He's not used to his first step being lateral or backwards. Instead he wants to charge in head first.  This is a large part of the reason why he looked better last year and has given this impression of "regression".  He simply isn't mentally able to fill the expanded role at a level this defense requires....  yet.  Last season he took most of his snaps as the nickel safety, WILL backer and on the edge.  This season he's being asked to do more.    Now, I say 'yet' because there have been a couple times where he has made some great plays in coverage and I go "YES, Please! More of that".   Other times? Not so much.     

 

edit:  I feel I have to REALLY drive this point home.   The ONLY reason Jacob Phillips is on the field is because of injury, and he's also the green dot.    Otherwise JoK would likely be taking his place in dime and nickel roles.   He might be one of the worst LB's in coverage and understanding coverages that I've seen.

[jrb12711]

16 hours ago, tiamat63 said:

So trust me, when coaches should go, I see it and provide good reasons before most anyone.    

Stef has no business being let go.

Woods... I'm on the fence with.  Mostly because this franchise will need a sacrificial lamb to silence the fans.  

 

 See above about Newsome, JoK and Delpit.     Further re: Delpit. He is INCREDIBLY aggressive underneath and attacking downhill.   So much that misdirection and coverage from playing on a back hash is a liability for him.  He's not used to his first step being lateral or backwards. Instead he wants to charge in head first.  This is a large part of the reason why he looked better last year and has given this impression of "regression".  He simply isn't mentally able to fill the expanded role at a level this defense requires....  yet.  Last season he took most of his snaps as the nickel safety, WILL backer and on the edge.  This season he's being asked to do more.    Now, I say 'yet' because there have been a couple times where he has made some great plays in coverage and I go "YES, Please! More of that".   Other times? Not so much.     

 

edit:  I feel I have to REALLY drive this point home.   The ONLY reason Jacob Phillips is on the field is because of injury, and he's also the green dot.    Otherwise JoK would likely be taking his place in dime and nickel roles.   He might be one of the worst LB's in coverage and understanding coverages that I've seen.

A couple of things-

If we're going to say in 2021 that the Browns had a cupcake schedule that perhaps artificially inflated the stats, the same can be said this year too. We've played two teams (Steelers and Panthers) in the bottom 4 of total offense, three teams (Jets, Falcons, Pats) smack in the middle or bottom half, and one good offense in the Chargers. And yet here we are essentially the worst defense in football.  Hence my overall vibe that this unit has regressed. As has also been noted, outside of Herbert the Browns haven't played one team with their long-term franchise guy under center (unless Zappe goes the TB12 route). That's just alarming to say the least.

I totally agree on Phillips-no business being on the field. I also agree on Stef, for sure.

Look, to say it simply these guys are just playing flat out there. It seems like there's no energy and 6 weeks into the season there's still miscommunication, role assignment confusion, and integrity issues. Those, to me, fall flat on the coach. You can't regress that badly with many of the same guys out of thin air.

[tiamat63]

29 minutes ago, jrb12711 said:

A couple of things-

If we're going to say in 2021 that the Browns had a cupcake schedule that perhaps artificially inflated the stats, the same can be said this year too. We've played two teams (Steelers and Panthers) in the bottom 4 of total offense, three teams (Jets, Falcons, Pats) smack in the middle or bottom half, and one good offense in the Chargers. And yet here we are essentially the worst defense in football.  Hence my overall vibe that this unit has regressed. As has also been noted, outside of Herbert the Browns haven't played one team with their long-term franchise guy under center (unless Zappe goes the TB12 route). That's just alarming to say the least.

I totally agree on Phillips-no business being on the field. I also agree on Stef, for sure.

Look, to say it simply these guys are just playing flat out there. It seems like there's no energy and 6 weeks into the season there's still miscommunication, role assignment confusion, and integrity issues. Those, to me, fall flat on the coach. You can't regress that badly with many of the same guys out of thin air.

 You're forgetting something, this time last year the Browns had the Malik's starting on the IDL and Walker the entire season.  That's 27% of your starting defense gone.  If you want to limit the numbers to just the front 7, that's 43% of your previous starters gone.  And while those previous starters were no means good, they weren't a complete liability against even the most bottom feeder of offenses.    The other issue is, since teams on the back half of last years schedule saw the so-so play up the middle, they've now crafted run heavy games plans against teams wanting to play more 2 high (a league wide trend) which also happens coincide with the Browns front office allowing a weakness last year to further grow into an absolute liability.  

 The communication issues at this point stem almost exclusively around Phillip's, Delpit and Emerson. I've only seen 1 bust  from Ward, JJ3 or Newsome in 3 weeks.  So that means I've got a trash LB, a young DB whose head is going a mile a minute,  but we need on the field and finally a rookie corner... That's about par the course, IMHO.

 Run fits haven't really been an issue. Players are in their gaps pre-snap. We're just straight up losing those individual battles up front 80% of the time.  Which speaks to what I've said about our talent and depth along the line. 

 And as we saw with the Pats, when we over simplify things too much on the back end,  we can be beaten in man coverage. 

 Perhaps this is the best way of phrasing it - we haven't quite regressed, but we have stretched our roster out a bit too thin. 

And roster construction lies with Depo and Berry.

[Vambo]

 

[calfoxwc]

My guess as the problem with the offense is this -

the Browns didn't have a genuine deep ball threat last year, and Baker was playing stupidly hurt with a shoulder sling job.

  Baker was very, very accurate coming out of college - so with obj - it opened up things for their offense - they went to the playoffs. beat pukesburg.

   After that, no obj, no deep threat, the offense was stifled, and Baker playing injured added serious failure on top of failure.

   This year, they added Amari Cooper - a real serious downfield threat.

Bissett - one of his biggest weaknesses is downfield accuracy.

and so it goes. The Browns are clueless as to how to put all the pieces in place.

****************************

    Having said that - there is the object of the historically stupid trade the Browns made.

Guess who these weaknesses are in their draft profile:

"

Weaknesses

• Frame is a little more slender than teams typically like
• Accuracy runs hot and cold
• Tends to over-stride on drive throws, causing release point to drop and balls to sail
• Ball placement on crossing routes and slants needs to improve
• Will leave throws behind intended targets
• Deep-ball accuracy has been scatter-shot over his last two seasons at Clemson, with throws sailing well beyond his target
• Design of offense limited his need to make full-field reads
• Has to become adept at working through progressions and playing chess against safeties
• Needs to let routes develop rather than rushing anticipatory throws
• Too many interceptions due to lack of vision, placement or decision-making
• Threw interception vs
• Troy against bracketed coverage he didn't see
• Baited into bad-decision interceptions twice by Florida State cornerbacks
• Has issues improvising away from initial, pre-snap plan even when pathway to target becomes muddy

Shotgun quarterback who, like Jared Goff, could take time getting used to huddling, pace of play-calling and drop-backs from under center"

*************************

     not Baker. or Bissett. etc etc.

Watson. Those are from watson's draft profile.

https://www.nfl.com/prospects/deshaun-watson/32005741-5433-8355-e029-e49022cf4b81

 

***************************************

     So, more failures.

 

My problem with the defense is still - if they had KEPT their damn pick, they could have added Jordan Davis to the interior of their defensive line. Just think how much that would have helped their lb's and helped stop the run.

 

Just seems hopeless.

I just don't know.

 

 

[jrb12711]

On 10/19/2022 at 9:21 AM, tiamat63 said:

 And as we saw with the Pats, when we over simplify things too much on the back end,  we can be beaten in man coverage. 

 Perhaps this is the best way of phrasing it - we haven't quite regressed, but we have stretched our roster out a bit too thin. 

And roster construction lies with Depo and Berry.

And I get all that, for sure. But it isn't just regression in talent areas. It's guys like Denzel Ward saying "ain't my fault" on Twitter, or JJ3 saying the team has  "commitment issues". It's Joel Bitonio coming out and essentially saying guys (on defense) aren't spending enough time looking at film and putting out effort: 

https://www.news5cleveland.com/sports/browns/always-more-you-can-do-browns-address-concerns-of-commitment-issues-within-team

This is why I'm saying strongly that coaching has to change at the defensive level. Woods lost this defense and it's showing on the field.

[syd]

On 10/16/2022 at 1:19 PM, TypicalBrowns50 said:

Luckily I have emotionally checked out of this year. The jets game was a sign of things to come. 
 

this is a concerning loss. So bad that you turn it off. The browns have talent. They aren’t utilizing it. If things don’t change when Watson comes back stef might get fired. Losing those valuable easy early games killed the season.

were 1 game outta first place that could change on sunday

[syd]

On 10/16/2022 at 3:40 PM, Silver slayer said:

Totally shitty coaching,  through and through absolutely terrible coaching. 

Preparation terrible 

In game decisions terrible 

Personal decisions terrible 

Kevin needs to be GONE 

fire the coach get rid of everyone Were In The Fuck has that gotten us over the years ya noob  ever realize that younger coachs need time to develop ? just as players do so sure fire everyone and never give the coach a chance to work with Watson great idea

side note : we are 21-18  with a trip to the playoffs 

[TypicalBrowns50]

Syd I love the optimism. I think Stefanski is a good playcaller and O coordinator. Is he a good head coach? Idk. 
 

when woods is gone in the off-season, he will have one more year with a new defense to prove he can get into the post season. 
 

with this roster, idk how they are 2-4. The ways they have lost games is just embarrassing. It’s not just the players, it’s an internal issue. 

[tiamat63]

16 hours ago, jrb12711 said:

And I get all that, for sure. But it isn't just regression in talent areas. It's guys like Denzel Ward saying "ain't my fault" on Twitter, or JJ3 saying the team has  "commitment issues". It's Joel Bitonio coming out and essentially saying guys (on defense) aren't spending enough time looking at film and putting out effort: 

https://www.news5cleveland.com/sports/browns/always-more-you-can-do-browns-address-concerns-of-commitment-issues-within-team

This is why I'm saying strongly that coaching has to change at the defensive level. Woods lost this defense and it's showing on the field.

 

That brings a two fold issue to my mind.

- If players are having a problem with the coaches, why is it not being addressed within the locker and meeting room? Why are players not holding each other accountable as well?  JJ3 saying the team has commitment issues means he, as the leader of the secondary, should be working hand in hand with the coaches to weed that mentality out. 

- If players have a problem with Woods, which I won't rule out as a possibility, why are they unable to put forth effort and still execute their assignments? I.E., why are they not being professional athletes?  So where is the personal accountability in all this?

 

 At this point, if the trade off for getting the front office to address the DL and LB issues is to get rid of Woods, then I'm all for it.  Because any other coordinator that comes in here with enjoy limited success at best with this current group.   But if we're going to fire Woods and not address personnel, then we are following the definition of insanity.  

[gumby73]

still can't explain how this same defense went to GB last Christmas and lost by only 2 😁

 

Elliott/T.Bryan/Delpit & Winovich fall under some type of future player development overthinking it 🤔

I mean heck, we could throw in names of below, that fall under 2 years or more of missing development

Schwartz/ Felton/ Rochell/ Togi/ Taki/ Phillips/ Fields/ Greedy to R. Harrison jr.

They've also might have found some good hits such as developing D'E Johnson/ R. Hudson/ E. Pocic & H. Froholdt.. but our best 2 position coaches may have the most to do with it ?  

 We have a whole department for this.. Lead by Andrew Berry   

• Assistant general manager/vice president of player personnel – Glenn Cook
• Vice president of player personnel process and development – Ken Kovash
• Director of player personnel – Dan Saganey  

 

Coaches/Players/Front office?

  a 2022 combo team effort, all have faults in this 2-4 start  

What's the one thing the Cavs/Guardians & Browns all have in common? young player development, needs more hits than misses

[Kvoethe]

Smartest play of the day...DPJ

[Dutch Oven]

16 minutes ago, Kvoethe said:

Smartest play of the day...DPJ

Not the smartest post of the day.... wrong game. 😁