Is Odell Beckham Jr. the problem or the solution? We will find out this season. (Getty Images)
Four issues that will dictate the Browns’ season
You must have an active subscription to read this story.
Click Here to subscribe Now!
Editor’s note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
(Second in a series previewing Browns training camp.)
Kevin Stefanski has preached to the Browns that nothing it accomplished in 2020 matters this year. Every season is a new season. Style points earned from crashing franchise barriers last year don’t carry over now. Nothing is given.
Last year was fraught with unique challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This season brings new issues that confront Stefanski, his coaching staff and players.
As the 2021 training camp kicks off on Wednesday, the following issues will dictate how far the team advances this season.
1. OBJ – is he the problem or the solution?
The Browns are bemused with the narrative that the offense and quarterback Baker Mayfield are better without Odell Beckham Jr.
They contend the offense’s turnaround over the second half of the 2020 season was the result of natural growth in -- and familiarity with -- Stefanski’s new offensive system and some key refinements made during the bye week. The company line is that had Beckham not been injured in the seventh game, improved chemistry between he and Mayfield would have come naturally, too.
That doesn’t explain why Mayfield looked like a completely different quarterback almost immediately after Beckham was lost with a torn ACL in the seventh game against Cincinnati. He completed 21 passes in a row with Beckham in the locker room.
With Beckham on the field last year, Mayfield had an 84.3 passer rating on 60.2 percent completions, 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions. After Beckham’s injury, Mayfield had a 103.8 passer rating on 66.2 percent completions, 16 touchdowns and one interception.
With Beckham, Mayfield averaged 6.4 yards per pass attempt. Without him, he averaged 7.83 yards per pass attempt.
As the Browns’ offense took off and the team won 11 games and then its first postseason game in 27 years, Beckham watched from afar, rehabilitating from the worst injury of his athletic career.
Was he humbled seeing the best team he’s been a part of win without him? Will he put aside individual goals for the good of the team? Will Beckham and Mayfield finally be on the same page in their third season as teammates and their chemistry be a positive and not a negative?
If the answers are yes, Beckham will be the icing on an offense that could be among the league’s top five.
If not, Stefanski’s job – and Mayfield’s -- will be a lot tougher.
2. Can Jadeveon Clowney and Takk McKinley be healthy and productive throughout the entire season?
GM Andrew Berry handpicked this duo to replace Olivier Vernon as a pass-rush complement to franchise end Myles Garrett. Berry had pursued each previously and he finally landed both on one-year prove-it deals – Clowney for $8 million and McKinley for $4.25 million.
The discounted price-tag for the former first-round draft picks was due to their injury history. Clowney missed eight games with the Titans last year with a core muscle injury that needed surgery after the season. McKinley missed 11 games with the Falcons and Raiders last year with a knee injury.
If neither Clowney nor McKinley can stay healthy this year, Garrett will not have the complementary rusher to ease the load and focus off him.
3. Have the Browns overdone the lighter, faster defensive look?
The Browns are infatuated with getting more defensive speed and athleticism on the field to combat the pass-happy trend of the league. Not only that, they know they need more speed to chase down the two quarterbacks standing in their way from getting to their first Super Bowl – Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes.
What they’ve done is stocked up on lighter, athletic linebackers. In fact, they have the lightest average weight in their linebacker position group of any team in the league.
Further, coordinator Joe Woods hopes to deploy a 4-2-5 alignment using an extra safety at the expense of a third linebacker about 40 percent of the time.
On the weekend of the draft, Browns national scout Charles Walls said, “If you watch successful teams, especially when they get into the playoffs, if you look at Tampa last year, they had no lack of speed or lack of range anywhere on defense. The more you can add to the group, the better. It can never hurt you having faster, more versatile players who can play football, hunt the ball and make plays. It can’t hurt you.”
Tampa Bay doesn’t play in the Browns’ AFC North division, of course. So you wonder if the Browns’ division rivals will counter their lighter, faster defensive approach with smash-mouth running. Baltimore has backs J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, Pittsburgh has rookie Najee Harris and Cincinnati has Joe Mixon to try.
Walls contended, “I would not look across the board at our defense and say that we are dramatically undersized or that a power scheme is going to be able to attack us. I would not say that at all.”
4. How will the Browns deal with the hype this time?
In 2019, the Browns were anointed by NFL schedule-makers as the AFC team to watch. They were assigned four prime-time games. We know what happened. They crumbled and stumbled to a 6-10 season.
Two years later, expectations are even higher. Coming off an 11-5 season and playoff victory in Pittsburgh, the Browns are considered by odds-makers as fourth choice to be the AFC representative in the Super Bowl behind the two-time AFC champions Chiefs and right there with the Bills and Ravens.
A couple of differences this time around.
One, the nucleus of players who experienced the 6-10 collapse is older and wiser, having picked themselves up and prospered in 2020. Two, Stefanski is the coach this time around, not Freddie Kitchens, and he proved last year that his team has total buy-in to what he preaches.
And he’s preaching don’t rest on the laurels of last season and don’t get caught up in expectations.
