Dawgs By Nature
This Sunday, the Cleveland Browns take on the Miami Dolphins. Below, we analyze a few advantages, disadvantages, or general thoughts about the two teams before getting to our predictions for the game.
I’ll still get excited if the Browns win, sure. But I don’t blame Myles Garrett one bit for picking his nails and being critical of the offense this past week. When he requested a trade earlier this offseason, I understood the sentiment, but thought the Browns should hang on to him for what he meant to the defense. And now, I feel defeated, just like I’m sure Garrett is.
The whole reason he made that pitch during the offseason was because he saw this coming and didn’t want to experience it again: seeing an offense that was incapable of doing anything. How many years are we going to waste a good defense with an incompetent offense? Just like I think back to when this team had a young offensive line, Nick Chubb, and Baker Mayfield, all set to be in their prime. And now, they’re either gone or aged, and there are so many positions that need to be upgraded in the future that it’s crazy how behind this offense is.
This week, the Browns take on the Miami Dolphins, and it’s a bad 1-5 team against a bad 1-5 team. Sure, something has to give, but gone is any sense of confidence I have in this club. Even if you look at all of the weaknesses the Dolphins may have, I can’t even, as a writer, get excited about breaking down those things because Cleveland’s offense is such a mess that anyone can stop them. This team needs to play sharp on all cylinders just to even try to squeeze out two touchdowns in a game, but they have issues catching the ball, Dillon Gabriel was rattled in his second start, and it seems like someone is missing a key block on every play. David Njoku as also been ruled out this week, and who knows what the offensive tackle position will bring us.
Rain is expected to play a factor during the game, and the wind should also play a factor. I don’t think highly of Tua in those situations, so I think both teams will have issues trying to move the ball. Will it come down to which team has the ball slip out of or through their hands in the conditions, setting up a short field for the other? Perhaps. Even if the Browns got something together this week that was positive, the weather conditions will make it challenging for us to really be able to say, “We saw some improvement,” as opposed to just chalking up to the conditions going our way this week. A sad state of affairs indeed.
Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz talked about trying to figure out their inability to stop teams in the red zone from scoring...
