Mid-week thoughts

The Browns are now two games into the hellacious part of the 2022 schedule. That's the bad news. It gets even 3worse starting Sunday with a trip to Baltimore. Don't bother looking for the good news. It won't arrive until Dec. 4 when Deshaun Watson returns to face his old Houston teammates.

By then, the season will be so far over for the Browns from a competitive standpoint, plans for next season will be well under way. Last season's debacle with Baker Mayfield will seem much more uneventful by comparison.

The rest of this month and the entire month of November is a five-game journey through a mine-filled gauntlet that would engender fear for even the best teams in the National Football League, let alone the staggering Browns.

In those five games, the Cleveland defense will face the likes of Baltimore's Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow of Cincinnati, Miami's Tua Tagovailoa, Josh Allen of Buffalo and Tampa Bay's Tom Brady. 

That defense couldn't control Joe Flacco of the NewYork Jets, Marcus Mariota of Atlanta, Justin Herbert of the Angeles Chargers and Bailey Zappe of New England, all of whom own victories over the Browns. Zappe and Flacco are backups and Mariota is barely average.

No one -- OK maybe the staunchest and deeply devoted fans of this team -- honestly believes the Browns, currently riding a three-game losing streak, have much of a chance to win any of these games. Head coach Kevin Stefanski, who is plugging holes at a furious pace, will be exhausted by next Jan. 8 in Pittsburgh.

He maintains he is sticking with Jacoby Brissett as his quarterback, sort of snubbing his nose at what seems to be a mounting cry by those who think the journeyman needs to take a seat at least for one game and see what Joshua Dobbs can do.

Brissett reached rock bottom last Sunday against New England with three turnovers and a passing performance reminiscent of the litany of awful Cleveland quarterbacks the club has employed the last two decades.  

That was due, in large part, to the strange strategy Stefanski turned to when the Patriots had early success stopping the Browns' strong ground game. With the score remaining close -- no more than a two-possession game -- until midway through the fourth quarter, he nevertheless chose to turn Brissett loose. That's exactly what Patriots head coach Bill Belichick wanted.

Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt, the very best running tandem in the NFL, combined to carry the football just five times in the second half. Five times!! Instead of continuing to run and try and wear down the Pats, Stefanski gave in. Gave up and put his trust in Brissett. That's bad coaching.

Brissett responded with 12 completions in 28 attempts for 175 yards and the lone touchdown of the afternoon. Twenty-eight forward passes by a mediocre at best quarterback and five runs in a game that was 24-15 with six minutes left.

And then Stefanski compounded the problem from a tactical standpoint by attempting a two-point conversion that failed badly, turning what would have been a one-possession difference (24-16) with a Cade York kick to two possessions. Stefanski might be book smart, but he is not a smart football coach.  

At the same time, no apparent breakthrough has been achieved by the highly disappointing play of the defense, which has consistently underachieved in every game. No matter what coordinator Joe Woods tries, it fails. He's puzzled, too.

"I thought we'd be further along obviously," he told the Cleveland media Thursday, referring to the strong finish that side of the ball had last season.  "There are a lot of things we're trying to clean up and we have to clean them up in a hurry.

"It's really hard to explain (what has gone wrong). We had a really good offseason, We had a really good training camp. . . . It was the best we've ever done since I've been here, but it didn't translate into the regular season."

One can only imagine the pain and damage Jackson, Burrow, Tagovailoa, Allen and Brady can inflict before Watson returns to clean up what figures to be one gigantic mess and attempt to keep his new team out of the AFC North cellar. That's a situation that probably never entered his mind.