The Browns’ nightmare season takes another hit after a blowout loss to the Chiefs

LANDOVER, Md. — It was fair to wonder if the Cleveland Browns might have to rely on their defense early in the season. It was completely fair to expect that quarterback Deshaun Watson and play-caller Kevin Stefanski would need a few weeks to push the right buttons for a number of reasons, a list that certainly starts with the fact that they were not a match stylistically at all. But it doesn’t stop there.

Cleveland has had issues with the offensive line — both personnel and performance — and even good lines take a few games to get in sync. The Browns overhauled their offensive coaching staff in the offseason, and Watson was limited until late July while recovering from shoulder surgery. Watson’s health, a shortage of offensive linemen, and training camp approaching like a summer camp for underprivileged kids led to Watson not taking a single preseason snap.

I could go on, I could walk the line between making excuses and reality. But now reality has slapped the Browns in the face. This is not a slow start. This isn’t one misstep here and one weird circumstance there that changes the face of gaming, this isn’t an accidental mistake or a mistake that derails a promising run. This is worse than I thought, worse than even the most outwardly concerned citizen or inwardly paranoid coach could imagine.

On Sunday, the Washington Chiefs sacked Watson seven times en route to a 34-13 victory. Other times, Watson fouled open receivers with errant passes and sometimes by not throwing the ball at all. He doesn’t give the Browns a chance on some plays, and other times his passes are dropped or held behind the line with the defense waiting. Cleveland seems to want to start with some type of fast, misdirected play and allow that to open up lanes down the field, but the result has been so poor that it’s difficult to even diagnose intent, and not just downfield. basis but week to week.

After the Browns were taken off the field by the leaders to fall to 1-4, a five-game sample is enough to say that the team with the highest payroll in NFL history has the worst offense in the league. Although the lack of discipline in other stages has shown in the results during this three-game losing streak, it is the lack of attacking production that is putting every other area of ​​the team in a bad place.

At 3.8 yards per play, the Browns have the lowest-powered offense through five games of any NFL team since the 2018 Buffalo Bills. Per Stathed. It was on track to be the worst in 25 years until backup quarterbacks Jameis Winston and Donta Foreman connected on a 16-yard touchdown with 1:22 remaining.

It was the first and third down conversion for the Browns on the day. They finished 1 out of 13 in third place and will remain last in the league in this all-important and often telling category. They converted the third drop in September at a rate of just under 21 percent.

On the first Sunday in October, they turned back. Numbers. Crime. The whole franchise, really. The leaders in September had the No. 30 pass defense in adjusted value for above-average defense, and they ranked at or near the bottom in multiple key defensive categories. Washington has won three in a row because of its offense. For a desperate Cleveland team, this was a chance to score 20 points for the first time this season and perhaps at least try to win a shootout.

Brown brought only rubber bullets. There were no shootouts and there was not even a contested game, despite the leaders shooting twice as many times in the first quarter (two) as they did in Weeks 2 to 4 combined (one).

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Eventually, the Commanders made big plays and put drives together. The Browns would have made seven straight punts in the first half had they not found a field goal early in the second quarter after starting at Washington’s 43-yard line.

The Browns forced a fumble on the first play of the second half, and that seemed like a necessary jumpstart to the kind of runaway 24-3 run on downs it would take to get back into the game. But instead of landing and building some momentum, they got to Washington’s 2-yard line, then had a false start, used a timeout, took a sack, saw Jerry Jeudy drop a touchdown pass, and then not only did they settle for a field goal but their fourth-down attempt turned into Delay in the game. The Browns didn’t have the right number of players on the field and didn’t want to use a second timeout around 90 seconds with over 27 minutes left in the game, which was actually understandable at that point.

But you can’t take those timeouts home, or to the top five picks in the draft in April. The season has slipped away. Yes, it’s still early in October. There’s nowhere to go but up. But in Watson’s third season as the starting quarterback, Stefanski’s fifth calling plays and general manager Andrew Berry’s fifth getting the final call on the roster, the Browns have cooked up a big burger.

From slumps to lack of a run game to having a league-high 26 sacks, there’s a lot of blame to go around. But there was no solution either, and after getting points on their first possession in each of the first four weeks, the Browns failed to get a touchdown on Sunday’s opening drive. On their second possession, they threw a blocker for a loss of seven, allowing a defender untouched in the backfield on second down before Elijah Moore dropped a pass, and Watson threw the ball away on third down. This became the first of six hat-tricks in the first 40 minutes of the game.

Numbers don’t always tell the full story. Granted, the Browns had the worst early October offense in six years, which no one tells us, but Stefanski won’t be sharing a single day with his grandchildren. But numbers can blur the whole story, and they do here. The Browns went over 3.6 yards per play late on a meaningless drive. They scored with 7:02 left to make it 34-13. The Leaders had already eliminated their quarterback by then.

The Browns also had a garbage-time touchdown against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1. Their first score against the Giants came on their first snap; A fumble set them up at New York’s 24-yard line. So, as bad as the numbers are, it’s likely that this crime actually happened worst From what the numbers show. In short, the final three minutes last week in Las Vegas were a chance for this team to validate everything, steal a win, and at least provide a glimmer of hope that Watson’s expensive and grueling experiment might still have a chance to work.

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They failed after that. They were worse here in what should have been a game of redemption. Stefanski was adamant after that He doesn’t change quarterbacksAnd he might not be allowed to, given the team’s investment in Watson and their uncanny dedication to continuing to back him. Maybe he’ll ditch the play by calling up new coordinator Ken Dorsey. Maybe he’ll shake up the staff instead. But it’s time for the Browns to not only do something different, but to do a lot of things differently.

This is beyond a nightmare. The nightmare was losing a home game to the previously winless Giants two weeks ago before a three-game road trip. It looked like he not only revealed some warts, but might come back to haunt Brown later. Instead, the haunting time came nearly four weeks before Halloween. In many ways, this franchise was all-in this season given Watson’s contract, the money spent across the roster and the ages of many of the Browns’ top players. However, they have to see that it is all in vain.

This, by the numbers, is the Browns’ worst offense since 2009 and is only slightly ahead of the 1999 expansion year Browns. This suggests, by eye test, that something resembling another approach to the expansion era might be the only way this thing can go. The reality is right in front of us.

(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)