Camp thoughts Vol. X

 

With the season opener just 15 days away, time to take a quick look at one specific area on the current Browns roster with wonderment. What in the world are they, most notably General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski, thinking when it comes to the population of the wide receivers room?

First of all, why are there 11 players in that room? And why are they plucking someone like Damion Willis off the waiver wire when he has no chance of making the final cut? Maybe training-camp fodder?

So why? Here is what Stefanski told the Cleveland media Saturday: “I just think Andrew and his staff have meetings every day and discuss what we went to do roster-wise and discuss it with the coaches, see what’s available and see if it can help us improve,” he answered in exquisite non-answer fashion.

It is no secret the Browns will be a vastly different team on offense this season. They will run the ball a lot. Then they will run it even more. This offense will employ the infantry route heavily in order to set up the forward pass.

Stefanski is wedded to the ground game. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, that part of the offense has always been a favorite and I never quite understood why coaches like Hue Jackson and Freddie Kitchens did not grasp the importance of that.

 

While it’s true the National Football League has become a passing league the last decade or so, the reason it is so effective for most teams is their ground games were strong enough to make it work.

 

Stefanski’s offense also heavily features tight ends, rendering the wide receivers position lower on the play caller’s go-to list. With running backs and tight ends getting close to two thirds of the play calls, where does that leave the wides?

 

As Minnesota’s offensive coordinator last season, Stefanski called on quarterback Kirk Cousins, who had averaged 574 passes and 4,351 yards a season a season in his previous four seasons, to throw the football just 444 times. He threw for only 3,603 yards and cut his interceptions from 11½ a season to just six.

 

It’s all about taking care of the football for the new head coach. The best way is to run football. Don’t know this for a fact, but Stefanski seems to adhere to the notion first espoused by the legendary Woody Hayes at Ohio State who said: “There are three things that can happen when you throw a pass, and two of them are bad.”

 

Of the Vikings’ 942 plays on offense from scrimmage last season, running backs and tight ends were featured in 610, or 64.8%. So you can bet with a large degree of assurance the Browns’ offense this season will feature running backs and tight ends at least 60% of the time.

 

Unless something spectacularly surprising occurs in the next couple of weeks with regard to player movement, Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. will be the Cleveland wideouts the vast majority of the time this season, at the same time playing a much smaller role than, for example, last season.

 

In the Kitchens offense in 2019, quarterback Baker Mayfield targeted Landry and Beckham a ridiculous 50.7% of the time, or once every other time he called a pass play. They accounted for nearly half ((49.5%) of Mayfield’s completions, 57.7% of his total passing yardage and 10 of his 22 touchdown throws.

 

Those numbers will not be anywhere near the same this season. Why not? They are way too unbalanced for Stefanski, whose goal is a 50-50 split.

 

All of which means Landry and Beckham are most likely going to see far less of the football this season and might even be called on to block for the run game. How Beckham handles that is something on which to keep an eye. His throw-me-the-damn-ball personality is likely to get in the way.

 

The danger to heavily emphasizing the ball-control game is the possibility of having to abandon it in the event the opposition establishes a lead that requires changing strategy and switching to the passing game. And with this season’s marginal defense, that is more an inevitability than a possibility.

 

In that event, though, the Browns are well equipped to handle the situation with the likes of Landry, Beckham, Rashard Higgins, rookie Donovan Peoples-Jones and KhaDarel Hodge. The ability to come back is much more dangerous this season than last.

So get used to seeing a lot of Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt, Austin Hooper, David Njoku and rookie Harrison Bryant this season in addition to Mayfield taking advantage with much more play action.