The Cleveland Browns’ offense was held scoreless with bad drive after bad drive, for much of the game. Before the game, I talked about a blueprint of letting the defense do their thing, and then the offense focusing on not making mistakes. The thing is, you still have to produce something. It was crazy that after seeing just 1.5 quarters of our offense in that game, I already felt like, “We’re going to look up in a couple hours and still see a 0 o the board.”
The team was on their way to that, before RB Quinshon Judkins sparked the offense with back-to-back big runs. In those next three minutes, the offense found a little bit of momentum. Still, Cleveland only had 221 yards of offense, and was 4-of-13 (30.8%) on third down. They had the ball for 26 minutes, to the Packers’ 34 minutes.
Below, we analyze the snap counts and stats on offense for the Cleveland Browns’ Week 3 game against the Green Bay Packers.
Quarterback
- Once again, the offense struggled, and it wasn’t the sharpest of days for QB Joe Flacco. I don’t put much weight into the interception he threw at the end of the first half, as that was an attempt to make something out of nothing. It’s a grander issue of the team still needing to find an identity, still needing to protect better, etc.
- If there’s a positive we can say about Flacco’s performance, it’s that there were several instances in which he prevented procedure penalties by shouting out to his teammates. He also recognized a few holding penalties and threw the ball quickly that way to draw attention to it. Lastly, he (and the rest of the team) ran that final play smoothly to get in position to clock it.
- Cleveland hasn’t had many downfield throwing opportunities, but Flacco missed a couple that he could have fit between defenders. It’s already been announced that the team will stick with Flacco for next week’s game against the Lions.
Running Back
- I previously said that the Browns’ best shot at having an identity on offense right now was through RB Quinshon Judkins. You could see it by his running style in Week 2, and he was getting the same type of runs against the Packers. Mid-way through the fourth quarter is when he broke free on back-to-back runs, helping set up Cleveland’s first scoring drive of the day. A little bit later, he scored the team’s go-ahead touchdown.
- Judkins played 55% of the snaps, Jerome Ford played 36% of the snaps, and Dylan Sampson only played 8% of the snaps. This is a step toward Judkins being the bell-cow back, and he had all but one of the team’s carries. I agree with that, because it’s sort of a, “Hey, let’s not have any wasted motion if we are going to run the ball.” Teams not named Cincinnati are clearly defending those swing passes to the...
Dawgs By Nature
