Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns will play their penultimate road game of the season on Sunday against the Chicago Bears.
Cleveland is coming off a loss to the one-win Tennessee Titans in a game where the offense actually did something. Meanwhile, the Bears lost to the Green Bay Packers to fall from the No. 1 seed in the NFC to No. 7, so they will be motivated to right the ship against the Browns before a return match with the Packers.
On Thursday, Cleveland’s coordinators held their weekly meeting with the media, and here are the key takeaways from what they had to say about the upcoming game against the Bears.
The Browns allowed 184 rushing yards last week to the Tennessee Titans. While much of that was the result of two plays, the defense needs to stay focused this week to avoid a repeat, according to Schwartz:
“The biggest point there is you can’t let your guard down. It’s like being a boxer, and you’re winning on points, but you get knocked out, (and that is) not a good result. And for us, when you’re on offense, and you run up 500 yards of offense, but you throw four interceptions, you can’t say, ‘well, we were great except for the four interceptions.’ And that’s the way defense is, too.
“It’s December football, it’ll be cold in the game, and run defense is going to be important. We need to play all our plays the way we played most of our plays, and we can’t let our guard down for one second, or we pay the consequences.”
Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams is only completing 57.8 percent of his passes, but that is more a reflection of the Bears looking to hit a big play as opposed to a shortcoming on the part of Williams, according to Schwartz:
“They’re pushing the ball down the field a lot. There are a lot of deep passes, passes over 15 yards, which just by definition, you’re not going to complete as many of those. And like some of the scrambles and things like that, they’re not super high percentage. I mean, they’re high reward if you can make them, but they’re not super high percentage.
“(Caleb) doesn’t build up stats. I mean, they have their RPOs, and they have their short passes, but, like, it’s run and play actions that really push the ball down the field, and I think you probably see that a little bit more in the completion percentage, but maybe less so with the yards per attempt and things like that.”
Tight end Harold Fannin Jr. leads the Browns in receptions and receiving yards, and his production hasn’t come as a surprise to Rees:
“Look, the guy’s a football player. I mean, from the day he came here and rookie minicamp, you guys were here, and you watched him catch however many balls he...
