We aren’t going to blame the weather, and we aren’t going to make excuses for the Cleveland Browns in losing Sunday to the New York Jets 17-12 in the Meadowlands.
The Jets are not a good football team. They came into the contest at 1-3 and were 3-14 last season, a worse regular season team than the Browns. So, after they won on Sunday, they are 5-17 since the beginning of last season and two of those wins are against Cleveland.
We don’t care about the conditions; this was a contest where the Browns were the better team and they lost. Good teams don’t allow that to happen, with the insinuation being Todd Monken’s squad isn’t a good football team.
Going into the season, we wrote about being concerned about the depth of the Browns and the lack of it showed up against the Jets. RT Tytus Howard was injured during the game which put Daward Jones out there.
That contributed to Deshaun Watson being sacked eight times, although to be fair, that number would be less if Watson would throw the ball away at times instead of trying to make something happen. That would seem to be a good trait, but he runs himself into a boatload of sacks.
And not having Mason Graham and Mike Hall at defensive tackle certainly didn’t help the defense, who outside of the first drive of the game, played pretty well, allowing less than 300 yards of total offense and forcing two turnovers.
Quincy Williams was all over the field and his fellow linebacker, Carson Schwesinger was excellent as usual. Both forced fumbles, the latter on a huge sack in the fourth quarter. And DT Maliek Collins had 1.5 sacks during the game.
The winning touchdown for the Jets was set up by a botched snap on a punt, giving New York a short field of 28 yards.
We know the Browns scored 20 or more points in their three wins, which means we have to address scoring just 10 and 12 points in the two losses. The biggest issue is the lack of a consistent running game. As a team, Cleveland averages just 3.7 yards per carry and if you take out Watson’s numbers (37 attempts for 167 yards), the average dips to just 3.4 per attempt.
That’s simply not good enough. Quinshon Judkins is getting just three yards per carry, yet the other running backs on the roster (Rocket Sanders and Jaleel McLaughlin) have just nine attempts.
Perhaps it’s the ineffective run blocking by the line, or a combination of that and just poor vision by the runners, but it’s not a good thing to have the QB be your best running threat.
On the other hand, when will the offensive coaches make getting the ball to Denzel Boston a priority? Through five games, the rookie has 16 receptions for a 20.6 average yards per catch. He had seven targets, the same number as Isaiah Bond (who dropped two passes) and Jerry Jeudy. That’s a head scratcher for sure.
By the way, TE Harold Fannin had just four targets. We aren’t geniuses but maybe try to get the ball to your best receivers more often and make that a priority.
Also, let’s not pin any flowers on Watson either. He had just 155 yards passing, the second time in three weeks that happened and although he had 205 in the season opener, a good bulk of that was in garbage time.
He’s been under the 200-yard threshold in 10 of his last 12 starts. Just sayin’
The Browns come home for a date with the first place Ravens (4-1) next Sunday with a chance to get back on top in the AFC North.
Again, it’s back on the coaches to clean up the mistakes and fix the problems, particularly on offense.
