Tag: steve wilks

Thoughts On Browns’ Fate This Year And Myles Garrett

With all of the fallout from the brawl at the end of the Browns win over the Steelers last Thursday night, people have forgotten Cleveland has won two straight over teams with a winning record, and their playoff hopes are still alive.

We have maintained that 9-7 will likely get the final post-season spot in the AFC so after the loss to Denver, it meant Freddie Kitchens’ squad could only have one more hiccup to have any chance to play an extra contest this season.

The Browns passed the first two tests, although both games were at home, as is this weekend’s game vs. the 2-8 Miami Dolphins.

Cleveland will be shorthanded defensively without the indefinitely suspended Myles Garrett, and Larry Ogunjobi, who will miss one game as a result of the melee at the end of the Pittsburgh game.

The need to continue winning is the most upsetting thing to us, and probably Garrett’s teammates as well.  Losing the team’s best defensive player isn’t conducive to reeling off a streak of victories, particularly when the Steelers and Ravens remain on the slate.

Let us state for the record that Garrett obviously deserves the suspension and we believe it will extend into next season, the first two games of 2020, a total of eight games.

One has to wonder, though, how Steelers’ QB Mason Rudolph avoided missing any games.  He was no doubt an instigator, and should have had to sit down for one game, at the very least.

We do wonder about the national narrative that says Garrett hit Rudolph late on the Steelers’ penultimate offensive play and that the former first overall pick has a reputation for playing outside the rules of the game.

Pictures have clearly showed the Browns’ DE hitting Rudolph just after the ball was released, it is clearly not a late hit, and the tackle was more of a dragging the guy down, nothing violent about it.

As for being a “dirty” player, Garrett has been in the NFL for two and a half seasons, and has received four roughing the passer penalties and one unnecessary roughness calls according the The Pro Football Database.

The Browns will miss one of their best players, every team in the NFL would too, but they can’t let the suspension get in the way of the business at hand, which is to continue winning.

They can’t overlook Miami, a team that plays hard for Brian Flores despite their record and their obvious strategy of copying what Cleveland did several years ago.

Then comes the rematch with the Steelers, which will be a huge step because of what happened and that the game is in Pittsburgh.

And of course, the Ravens will arrive in Cleveland with revenge on their mind.  Baltimore has the second best record in the AFC and hasn’t lost since the Browns laid a beatdown on them.

Kitchens and defensive coordinator Steve Wilks will need to generate a pass rush someway the rest of the season without Garrett, who has 1/3rd of the team’s sacks this season.  A stat the Browns rank 6th in the league in.

Against Miami, Cleveland will have their top two pass rushers out.  Will Wilks blitz more to get pressure and depend on corners Denzel Ward and Greedy Williams to defend.

Is it impossible?  No.  After the Dolphins’ game, Ogunjobi will be back and perhaps so too will Olivier Vernon.

As Kitchens said, everyone will just have to do their job better for the Browns to keep winning.  That’s all anyone can do right now.

MW

 

Assigning Blame? Don’t Forget Dorsey And Others.

We said Sunday’s game at Denver was a “must win” for the Cleveland Browns, and they lost.

Now, with the playoffs being a extremely vague possibility, we are sure that week by week, people will be picking over the coaching of Freddie Kitchens, and pointing out things that should get him fired.

However, no one focuses on two other people who should share the blame with the head coach, and they would be GM John Dorsey and defensive coordinator Steve Wilks.

When the Browns started winning last season, there were some who were quick to get close to Dorsey and be his friend.  Perhaps that has clouded their view of the GM.

When Dorsey traded for Odell Beckham Jr. last spring, he signaled that the franchise was all in going for a playoff spot this season.  However, he was doing so with a rookie head coach.

Unlike the situation in Los Angeles with Sean McVay, who has former head coach and long time NFL assistant Wade Phillips as a mentor, the only former head guy on Kitchens’ staff is Wilks, who guided Arizona last season.

There are coaches with a lot of experience on the staff in James Campen (15 seasons), Stump Mitchell (16), and Wilks (14), but wouldn’t it have been better for Kitchens if a guy who has had some multiple years as a head man in the NFL that he can talk to every day?

There is something to say about continuity too.  The Browns finished last year winning five of their last seven, and part of that was the play of QB Baker Mayfield, who thrived under the offense called by Kitchens.

Yes, Kitchens still calls the plays, but bringing in an offensive coordinator in Todd Monken, who runs an entirely different scheme, seems to have halted the momentum built a year ago.

This is clearly not the same attack as last season, and we do wonder if there has been any considerations within the offense to play to the personnel’s strengths.

We seem to remember a lot of slants run for Beckham in New York, trying to use his ability to run after the catch to advantage.  We’ve seen almost none of that with the Browns.

And by the way, the trade for Beckham seems to have the quarterback trying to keep him happy as well.  Mayfield didn’t seem to force a lot of balls into coverage last year.

More than a few analysts have said perhaps the second year quarterback wasn’t ready to play with a big time wide out like Beckham.

Another question is the choice of Wilks as defensive coordinator.  Wilks seems to want to play a lot of zone coverage, but Dorsey seemed to go out of his way to draft cover cornerbacks in Denzel Ward and Greedy Williams, and then invested a lot in the defensive line to pressure opposing quarterbacks.

If that was the intent, then Wilks isn’t making the best use of the tools he has either.

Kitchens is getting a lot of blame for being in charge of the island of misfit toys that has been assembled by Dorsey.  It seems like the GM just decided to bring in a bunch of talent and expected a rookie head coach to make them fit.

That might be okay in other sports, but in football, the players have to play as a cohesive unit, and if one person is in the wrong spot, or freelancing, it screws everything up.

Perhaps that’s the story of the 2019 Cleveland Browns.

MW