There has been one easy target for the lack of success from the Cleveland Browns in the first half of the season.
Quarterback Deshaun Watson has been a lightning rod since the Browns acquired him via a trade with the Houston Texans. Watson has done little to help his cause thanks to an NFL suspension and back-to-back season-ending injuries that have limited him to 19 games since the start of the 2022 season.
The situation hit rock bottom in the season’s first seven games as Watson threw for too few yards, took too many sacks, and led an offense that could not find the end zone.
While it feels like Watson is an outlier, the truth is his poor play may have just been more of the same for the Browns.
That is one of the key takeaways from Mike Sando’s latest column at The Athletic, which points out the uncomfortable truth that poor production from the offense has been the norm ever since Jacoby Brissett gave way to Watson 12 games into the 2022 season.
Sando looked at games started by Brissett, Watson, Joe Flacco, and Jameis Winston using Expected Points Added (EPA) as a data point and the results are sobering:
Now seems like a good time to remind ourselves that Cleveland’s offense has been consistently poor from a statistical standpoint since the Jacoby Brissett glory days of early 2022. That includes the feel-good six-start run with Flacco in the lineup late last season — for which he won Comeback Player of the Year — when the Browns finished with -10.6 offensive EPA on a per-game average, right in line with the -10.4 average across Watson’s 19 starts.
Perhaps this will become a one-off rough game for Winston and the Browns. But the overall trend is clear and problematic for Cleveland, whether or not Watson is in the lineup.
But wait, there’s more!
Anyone watching the Browns play knows that quarterback has been an ongoing issue, but it is not the only problem plaguing the team this year.
During last season’s run to the playoffs, the defense capitalized on turnovers to lead the NFL in EPA per play allowed and was No. 2 in points allowed per possession. There has been a major falloff this season as the Browns are currently No. 11 in points allowed per possession and No. 18 in EPA per play allowed.
The biggest difference, according to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, is that the defense no longer forces turnovers. Last year, the Browns picked off 3.4 percent of opposing passes to rank at No. 3 in the league This year? They are at the bottom with a rate of just 0.4 percent.
The defense has also struggled in man-to-man coverage after leading the league last season with a quarterback rating of 26.2 in that coverage. This year they have dropped to No. 11, and have just one interception in 133 pass attempts while playing man, compared to nine interceptions in 246 pass attempts last year, according to Barnwell.
That dip in production has left the defense needing help from the offense, which has not worked out so far. It’s not just the passing game, as the run game has fallen apart with the Browns ranking in the bottom quarter of the rankings in both yards per carry and success rate. Even the return of Nick Chubb has done little to help, as almost 37 percent of Chubb’s carries have resulted in no gain or a loss of yards, according to Barnwell.
Add it all up, and the 2-7 record that the Browns will carry into the bye week doesn’t seem so surprising.
It also highlights that there are no easy fixes on the horizon, which makes the upcoming offseason the latest in what feels like a never-ending cycle of the “most important offseasons in franchise history.”
