Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns are back home on Sunday in front of the mob, we mean adoring fans, for a game against the Baltimore Ravens.
This is the first divisional rematch of the season after the Browns dropped the Week 2 game in Baltimore. Since then, the fortunes of the two teams have been on different trajectories as the Browns are once again residing in the basement of the AFC North Division, while the Ravens are getting healthy and appear poised to march unopposed to the division title.
The game marks quarterback Dillon Gabriel’s first career start against the Ravens, making it the ninth consecutive game against Baltimore where Cleveland will have a different starting quarterback from the previous meeting.
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 Ravens.
In the first meeting with the Ravens, Cleveland defense held running back Derrick Henry to 50 rushing yards (he is averaging just 56 yards in eight career games against the Browns), and quarterback Lamar Jackson to just 13 rushing yards.
With the division foes familiar with each other, stopping the run is more about attitude than scheme, according to Schwartz:
“Scheme-wise, there’s really not a whole lot (to change). It’s more just attitude. I think (the Ravens) had pretty good idea what we were going to do in the first game. When you play division games like this, particularly coaching staffs that have been around for a few years and players that have been around for a few years, there’s not a whole lot of secrets this time year.
“There’s very little in this game that we’re going to do that the Ravens are going to be like, ‘woah, where did that come from?’ Because if it was, we would have been doing it last game, the game before that. They know us, we know them. It’s classic division games. And it comes down to who plays physical, who does the techniques well, who plays with the best fundamentals, who plays with the best spirit, who makes the fewest mistakes. It comes down to those things as opposed to a coach coming up with a with a magic scheme or something like that.”
With the defense trying to give the offense one more chance last week against the New York Jets, defensive lineman Cameron Thomas committed a penalty on a fourth-down play that allowed the Jets to run out the clock.
The coaches obviously don’t teach players to commit a penalty, and sometimes things happen. But players need to move on to the next play, according to Schwartz:
“I’ve made mistakes in games where you do something, make a bad call, or something like that, it’s not as evident as that. I think that if you look across that game, I’m sure dozens of people on both sides made mistakes and plays...
