Browns Offense is Offensive So Far

When the Cleveland Browns and Phil Dawson parted way in the off-season, more than one pundit said it wasn’t a big deal because the new coaching staff was going to score touchdowns instead of kicking field goals.

How do those people feel now, as the team fell to 0-2 with a 14-6 loss to the defending Super Bowl champion Ravens.

The Browns’ new offense, coached by Rob Chudzinski and Norv Turner, looks a lot like the one that performed last season. They’ve scored 16 points combined in the two contests, scoring just one touchdown, and getting three field goals from Billy Cundiff.

Much of the optimism came from the thought that Cleveland had a solid offensive line, but the injuries to guards Shawn Lauvao and Jason Pinkston have weakened that unit significantly, so much that Brandon Weeden has been sacked 11 times in the first two games.

The other thing killing the offense has been third down conversions. Through two games, the Browns are a pathetic 5 out of 29 in trying to stay on the field, a paltry 17.2%. That doesn’t get it done.

Cleveland came out with a big play, a 53-yard strike to TE Jordan Cameron on their first offensive play, getting them to the Ravens’ 7. But two Trent Richardson runs and a third down incompletion had the Browns settling for a field goal.

On their second possession, two consecutive penalties on third down, the first coming on a third and two situation, killed a drive. That cannot happen if you want to play winning football.

Two possessions later, two sacks stopped a drive that had accumulated three first downs.

Sacks, penalties, and the inability to run the football isn’t a formula for winning football. We’ve said for years that the common thread for the Browns in the last 14 years was they couldn’t run the ball, and they couldn’t stop the run.

Although once again, in a game they were trailing just 7-6 going into the fourth quarter, Trent Richardson didn’t carry the ball once in the final stanza. Not once. That’s a head scratcher for sure.

At least these Browns can stop the run. Ray Horton’s defense only allowed 99 yards on 36 attempts to Baltimore, an average of 2.8 yards per carry.

That just plays into our point, though. Just averaging less than three yards per attempt, Baltimore still attempted 36 runs. The Browns? They tried to run the ball just 20 times for the game, and two were runs by Weeden on aborted passing plays.

Until the Browns make a commitment to run the ball, they will continue to struggle moving the ball. They are putting too much of the offense on a quarterback who isn’t prepared to handle it.

Defensively, the Browns pitched a shoutout in the first half, but for the second straight week, the opponent made adjustments and moved the ball better after halftime.

Rookie first round pick Barkevious Mingo made his NFL debut and showed very well, getting a sack and pressuring Raven QB Joe Flacco a couple of other times. DE Desmond Bryant had a half sack (with Jabaal Sheard), giving him 2-1/2 on the season.

Buster Skrine was picked on once again, and was forced to make seven tackles, but opposing QBs are going to go after him because the alternative is Joe Haden.

You can’t argue about the defense though. They allowed just 14 points, and that should win games at the NFL level. In fact, that defensive performance would have won every single early game played on Sunday.

Chudzinski and Turner have to come out and run the football and stick with it even if Richardson isn’t getting five yards per carry. That should take some pressure off the line, making it easier to protect Weeden.

Until that happens, this football team is going to continue to struggle.

Browns Will Be Improved, But No Playoffs Yet

By all accounts, last year’s Cleveland Browns were a mess.

The team was sold pretty much right as training camp opened, which probably made the front office and coaching staff feel like lame ducks, which it turned out was entirely correct.

While GM Tom Heckert and coach Pat Shurmur continued to work hard at their jobs, in the back of their minds, they surely felt they would be looking for work after the season.

This year, new owner Jimmy Haslam and team president Joe Banner have their own people in place, making for more stability and confidence for both the personnel people and the coaching staff.

Since professional football is probably the sport where coaching makes the most difference, the new experienced coordinators will make first time head coach Rob Chudzinski seem more experienced. That will be critical this season.

Chudzinski and his staff have inherited a lot of talented, young players which should also make the growing pains less severe. In fact, we see a lot of improvement for the Browns both in terms of the players and the team’s record.

There is no reason we can see that this football can’t finish around the .500 mark, going anywhere from 7-9 to 9-7.

Why won’t this team lose 10 games for the sixth consecutive year?

Because the new offensive staff will put the players in position where they will succeed instead of making them adapt to a system to which they were ill-suited.

That is to say, Norv Turner will let Brandon Weeden throw the ball downfield and run more plays out of the shotgun formation, two of the things that made him a first round pick out of Oklahoma State.

He will stop running Trent Richardson between the tackles exclusively. Richardson ran an off tackle play against the Lions in the second preseason game and we almost fell out of a chair. Let linebackers and defensive backs try to bring down the former Alabama runner.

Chudzinski and Turner will also reap the benefit of several young players coming into their own as NFL players. WR Greg Little, TE Jordan Cameron, T Mitchell Schwartz should all be nearing the peak of their abilities.

Defensively, Banner and GM Mike Lombardi made getting after the opposing quarterback a priority, and defensive coordinator Ray Horton is just the man to implement the plan.

The Browns have quality and quantity on the defensive line, and mostly with young players too. Players like former first round pick Phil Taylor, Ahtyba Rubin, Billy Winn, John Hughes and outside linebackers Jabaal Sheard and Barkevious Mingo have the ability to make the other team’s passers very uncomfortable.

Gone are the days of the bend, but don’t break schemes the Browns have used for most of the past fifty seasons. Horton’s group may give up some big plays, but they will make more than they allow.

Some of the improvement will come from the coaching staff, but much more will come from just having the talented players drafted in the last few years come into their own. Of course, the coaches will take advantage of this.

You hate to make a judgment like this, but by the end of the year, we may be talking about how Shurmur may have been one of the worst head coaches in the NFL in recent years.

This year’s team should play an exciting brand of football, and one that will pay off in a few more victories too.

The first step to a playoff spot comes this season.

Browns Enter Camp Poised for Success

It’s finally here, football fans! The Cleveland Browns open training camp at the end of this week, and exhibition football is just around the corner.

After accumulating cap space and high draft choices over the past few years, the Browns should be poised for improvement. Records of 5-11 and 4-12 should no longer be acceptable or tolerated.

This football team now has a new head coach in Rob Chudzinski and experienced offensive and defensive coordinators in Norv Turner and Ray Horton. These coaches have track records of developing players and putting them in position for maximum success.

That would seem to bode well for young veterans like QB Brandon Weeden, RB Trent Richardson, WR Josh Gordon, DE/LB Jabaal Sheard, NT Phil Taylor, and CB Joe Haden.

This squad has good, young players ready to make the step in becoming solid, productive football players, and fans should have faith that the new coaching staff will make that happen.

For all of the talk about Turner being a passing game guru, the man has a history of running the football effectively too. His offenses have been known to stretch the field with the passing game and pound the ball on the ground too.

That would seem to be a perfect fit for both Weeden and Richardson, as that would appear to be their strengths. If either does not flourish under the former San Diego head coach, then the front office will have to look to replace them both.

This isn’t to say that Turner is a miracle worker, but he’s had success in the NFL as an offensive coordinator and it seems like he has been able to maximize the strengths of players. And that’s exactly what Weeden needs after last year’s dink and dunk attack.

Horton’s influence is something new to Cleveland and his defense should be interesting to watch for Browns’ fans.

He likes to attack and that is something that we can’t remember from a Cleveland defense, and we’ve been following the orange and brown for almost 50 years.

Even in the late 80’s when Cleveland has two elite cornerbacks in Hanford Dixon and Frank Minniefield, they really weren’t an attacking style defense that got after the opposing quarterback.

Horton promises his crew will get after the passer and that will disrupt the aerial game.

That will be quite a contrast from the “bend, but don’t break” schemes Browns’ fans have been seeing since the days when Blanton Collier was roaming the sidelines as the head coach here.

With the talent acquired from the past few drafts, including the last few from the previous regime, and the experienced proven coordinators secured by team president Joe Banner and Chudzinski, if the Cleveland Browns can’t take a quantum leap forward now, they may never will.

It’s finally time to be optimistic about Cleveland’s football team, and with good reason.

Fans should expect a team that contends for the playoffs, nothing more, nothing less. And that is a good thing.

If the Browns don’t win seven or more games in 2013, there should be major disappointment.

And we didn’t even mention Jimmy Haslam’s problems with his company either.

QB Switch Makes Sense for Browns

Within the last week, the Cleveland Browns have changed the dynamic at the quarterback position.

First, they signed free agent passer Jason Campbell, late of the Bears, but before that a starter in Washington and Oakland to a two-year deal, and then yesterday, they traded Colt McCoy to San Francisco with a sixth round pick for a fifth rounder and a seventh rounder.

Campbell, as former coach Pat Shurmur famously called him, is a “big, pretty thrower”. At 6’5″ and 223 pounds and blessed with a big arm, he is very similar in size and style to Brandon Weeden. This means no matter who is the Browns’ starter this season, the offense that Norv Turner advocates, one that stresses downfield throws and a strong running game, can remain the same.

Besides the similarity in style, the switch also gives Rob Chudzinski and Turner a more experienced quarterback than the one that departed. Campbell has made 71 starts, with a career 31-40 record.

On the other side, McCoy has made 21 starts with a 6-15 record.

Campbell has a lifetime touchdown to interception ratio of 76 to 52. McCoy’s is 21 to 20.

The newest Brown’s career completion percentage is 60.9% and his average yards per attempt is 6.7, roughly the same numbers McCoy had during his rookie season, a year that had many feeling McCoy could be the Cleveland quarterback of the future.

That means that Campbell over his seven years in the league on average is as good as McCoy’s best. Of course, we all know that for whatever reason, Colt McCoy never played as well as he did his first year in the league again.

Since leaving Washington, Campbell has been better than he was with the Redskins, with an 11-8 record as a starter, firing 21 touchdowns while throwing 14 picks.

In 2010, a year the Raiders finished 8-8, they may have made the playoffs had Campbell not missed three games with injuries. Oakland lost all three contests and lost the division to Kansas City by two games. The following year, Oakland was off to a 4-2 start before the Browns, ironically ended Campbell’s season with a broken collarbone.

The Raiders acquired Carson Palmer in a horrible deal to try to make the playoffs that season, and the former Auburn Tiger never got his job back. He was a backup for the Bears last season.

There is no question he will provide real competition for Weeden for the starting job.

As for McCoy, for whatever reason, his career was never the same after the Jets game his rookie year, when he led a drive to tie the game and send it into overtime, and had a game winning drive snuffed out when WR Chansi Stuckey fumbled close to field goal range.

The Browns’ season fell apart, Eric Mangini was fired, and Pat Shurmur and his Stone Age offense came in.

Instead, Brandon Weeden and Jason Campbell are the guys going forward. And based on statistics, there is no way you can say team president Joe Banner and GM Mike Lombardi didn’t improve the roster with this move. Campbell has better numbers than McCoy no matter how you slice it.

After all the hand-wringing about the change in management and the change in defensive scheme, it is tough to say the Browns’ roster isn’t better than it was at the end of last season.

That should be all that matter.

Please, No First Round QB For Browns

The Cleveland Browns have a new owner, a new CEO, a new vice president of player personnel, a new head coach, and new coordinators. It was really a case of out with the old and in with the new.

Here’s hoping the new regime doesn’t do something that the front office’s of the past have done in the recent past. And that is draft another quarterback in the first round of this April’s NFL draft.

This is not an endorsement of Brandon Weeden, Colt McCoy, or even Thad Lewis. Both Rob Chudzinski and Norv Turner will make a determination who is the best quarterback to run the offense, but either the Browns have to trade for a veteran who can start, or go with one of the guys currently on the roster.

The Browns have too many other holes on the squad to select another QB with the sixth pick in the draft, particularly when it is their only pick in the first two rounds.

The switch to a 3-4 defensive alignment means new defensive coordinator needs some more linebackers to implement the scheme. Also, the defensive backfield is short of another quality cornerback to pair with Joe Haden.

So, it would be a mistake to pick a quarterback in the first round.

Also, there are no Andrew Lucks or Robert Griffin IIIs in this year’s draft. The best passers available this year are West Virginia’s Geno Smith, USC’s Matt Barkley, and North Carolina State’s Mike Clennon. While all three might be taken in the first round, it would be because of the NFL’s search for possible franchise quarterbacks, not because they are first round talents.

A list of the best players available might list one or two of them in the top 30, and probably none of them would be in the top ten. To pick one draft guru, CBS’ Rob Rang, he has Smith listed as the 11th best player and Barkley next at 17. Those are the only QBs he has listed in the top 30.

That means taking one of those guys at six would be a big time reach, and with a franchise on the brink of playoff contention, it’s not worth the gamble.

No matter what anyone thinks of Weeden, he deserves the right to compete for the job, and in fact, he shouldn’t be handed the gig after a rookie season that didn’t see progress as it went on.

However, it is clear here that the offense ran by Pat Shurmur did not play to Weeden’s strengths, a thought shared by more than one NFL analyst during the season.

If CEO Joe Banner and Michael Lombardi want this team to improve, they need to bring in a guy who has played in the NFL to compete with Weeden, not another guy who hasn’t taken a snap in the pros, and will be learning on the job.

Drafting a player like Luck or Griffin III is one thing, but handing the reins to Geno Smith or Matt Barkley doesn’t seem like the thing to do if you want to get off to a good start next season.

The Cleveland Browns need to add an impact player with the sixth pick this spring, a player who can help now. Hopefully, they won’t be picking this high again for a while.

Letting last year’s high picks on offense (Trent Richardson and Weeden) improve, and helping out a defense that needs an assist in the secondary or in getting to the opposition’s quarterback is the way to help the Browns win in 2013.

Taking another QB isn’t a smart move now.