Final thoughts on the Cleveland Browns’ 28-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, and the he-said, he-said of the start of the bye week.
1. This was about the quarterbacks: Lamar Jackson being at his best, Deshaun Watson being unavailable due to a right shoulder contusion and Dorian Thompson-Robinson being overmatched. That combination ended up being even worse for the Browns than most imagined, and it ended up being one of Cleveland’s worst performances in years.
Outside of a few warmup tosses, Watson did not throw in practice all week, but the Browns went to Sunday morning believing he might play. After an abbreviated on-field workout that only included four throws, Watson was made inactive for the game. There was some mystery coming in and some leaving as coach Kevin Stefanski said Monday that Watson had been medically cleared to play, but Watson made the decision not to.
“I’m comfortable with the medical,” Stefanski said. “Obviously, we talked with the doctors, structurally we feel good about (Watson’s shoulder). He’s going to use this week to rest and continue to get treatment. I feel like medically we’re all on the same page.
“And let me say, (Watson) knows his body. He’s played through serious pain before, very serious injuries. It wasn’t a matter of pain tolerance or anything. He just did not feel like he had his full faculties.”
That leaves the impression that the Browns were caught off guard by Watson not playing. The results — and a game plan that basically fed a rookie quarterback to the wolves — back up that impression. Nothing went right for the 2-2 Browns. All momentum is gone, and the 3-1 Ravens now have two division wins. There’s a chance this game haunts the Browns later in the standings, even if Watson comes back healthy and they’re able to make their awful performance an outlier as the season goes on.
The Browns need Watson with full faculties, full control of the offense and as close to full health as he can be. We were again reminded Sunday that there is no real backup plan if Watson isn’t available and playing at a high level.
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2. Browns fans hear of a shoulder injury and even the slightest hint of disconnect between coach and quarterback, and they automatically think back to 2021. That was an injury to Baker Mayfield’s non-throwing shoulder — and there ended up being multiple injuries — that led to a whole season of the quarterback saying different things about his health at different points of the year. Eventually, a rift between Mayfield and Stefanski only grew as the quarterback continued to play poorly.
It felt last Thursday and Friday like the Browns were just trying to convince the Ravens that Watson might play, but now the impression is that the team believed Watson would be out there. In either case, Watson not being available left Cleveland in a bad spot — and the results say that Stefanski had no answers without his starting quarterback.
For now, anyway, I’m going to choose to believe that the sky is not failing and that Watson will be able to start in the Browns’ next game on Oct. 15. Stefanski said after the game that the Browns expect Watson back versus the San Francisco 49ers. With the bye, Watson gets more than a week to rest and get treatment before he returns to the practice field.
In the bigger picture, Watson and this Browns’ offense still need practice. There’s much that needs to be refined. Outside of the result, the biggest disappointment is that Watson had played probably his best game as a Brown in Week 3 and the offense didn’t get a chance to follow it up. We’re in the second month of Watson’s second season and he’s still trying to build chemistry with his play caller, blockers and pass catchers. He was sharp versus the Tennessee Titans, but this passing game is still heavy on Amari Cooper and light on anything else.
Amari Cooper has been the Browns’ only consistent threat in the passing game so far this season. (Andrew Nelles / USA Today)
What could Watson at significantly less than 100 percent have done against the Ravens? How can the Browns find more from the running game and the skill position players not named Cooper? Can the Browns use next week’s practices and a difficult matchup versus the 49ers to get the offense back on track? Those are all things that, to me, are more important questions for the team to answer than anything that came out of the coach’s news conference.
Most importantly, Watson has to get — and remain — healthy. He suffered the injury while taking on a tackler, and any kind of throwing shoulder issue is of some concern with 13 games left. Stylistically, Watson is at his best when he’s able to run to extend plays and at least occasionally by design. Especially with the current state of the Browns’ rushing attack without Nick Chubb, Watson is going to have to run. The Browns need their quarterback available and able to push the ball downfield.
I’m not buying that there’s some great conspiracy or great divide — at least currently. It is worth another reminder that the quarterback with the fully guaranteed contract is the one who truly holds the power if things don’t go well, but it’s just early October and Cleveland still has every chance to be a playoff team.
3. This was an organizational loss. The Browns failed Thompson-Robinson, and the rookie quarterback clearly gave them no chance to win. The offensive line struggled all day to block Jadeveon Clowney, and it really was in a bad spot late with the Browns down multiple scores and needing to throw. The run game was abandoned early and Thompson-Robinson kept throwing in the direction of several Baltimore players. The defense couldn’t keep up with an elite quarterback and elite tight end.
I don’t think the Browns would have won the game with Joshua Dobbs at quarterback. But with so much at stake this season, it is worth wondering if they really thought they were getting better by trading Dobbs to acquire a fifth-round pick and making Thompson-Robinson their backup. No team that has to play a significant amount of the season with its backup is going to win big prizes, but the goal in building a quarterback room should be to have a player who can keep things afloat for a game or two in emergency situations. The Browns encountered an emergency situation, and Thompson-Robinson gave them no chance to win. Quarterback is the most important position in sports, and the QB room is supposed to be the most important in any team’s facility.
I have to believe that if the Browns were 100 percent sure Watson wasn’t going to play, they would have incorporated either Elijah Moore as a wildcat/running quarterback or more than two plays of the Harrison Bryant quarterback sneak package. There would have been more focus on establishing the run and trying anything to keep Thompson-Robinson out of so many straight dropbacks. Maybe I’m wrong and the game plan really was just that bad. A rookie quarterback versus Ravens middle linebacker Roquan Smith is not a fair fight, and it only got worse as the game went on.
4. The run game is a mess. Again, there wasn’t a lot that went right against Baltimore, and the overall theme is the offense needs more time to develop. But the loss of Chubb makes things tough on all involved. That the Browns made Moore their marquee offensive addition of the offseason is another cause for concern. He’s clearly not cut out for the kind of role the Browns envisioned and are trying to force him into. They need Watson healthy and need more time to get everyone comfortable with plays and formations that feature Watson on the run and some element of surprise. What they’re rolling out there in their base offense just isn’t going to consistently challenge good defenses.
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Jerome Ford is a talented and dynamic young player. He doesn’t appear to be a feature back — at least not in the traditional mold — so the Browns might have to explore external options. It’s clear they don’t have a lot of trust in Kareem Hunt at this stage, and eventually they’re going to need more out of the backfield.
Perhaps the lone highlight of Sunday was that the Browns got David Njoku involved in the offense. Njoku played despite having suffered significant burns on his arms and face in a household accident, and Cleveland needs Njoku to be a reliable target and extender of plays once Watson returns.
5. As I wrote immediately after the loss, there’s just not a lot else to say about this game. It goes down as a missed opportunity for the Browns, and it’s going to lead to much disappointment internally and externally even independent of what’s now a guessing game with Watson. The product the Browns put out there was 2017 levels of bad.
I’ll stick with the old “truth is in the middle” cliche. The Browns’ trouncing of the Titans led to much celebration and might have been the start of an offensive breakthrough, but the Titans were cooked in the second half and the Browns took advantage. Assuming Watson can get healthy, the Ravens game can be written off as just one loss and one that can be forgotten — as long as Cleveland wins the winnable games it has on the schedule through October and November.
Go ahead and say it in your full Bill Parcells voice: You are what your record says you are.
The Browns talked a lot about being the only team to play all three of their division opponents in the season’s first four weeks, and they went 1-2. They could have beaten the Ravens and shifted the external discussion toward the AFC North standings and future games getting flexed to sexier TV time slots. Instead, the Browns have fans wondering about the state of the quarterback position and overall state of a squad that next plays an important game against the 49ers, who might be the NFL’s best team. The 49ers have a Sunday night game this week against the Dallas Cowboys before making the cross-country trip to play a 1 p.m. game versus the Browns, so maybe the timing is right there.
Watson being healthy and being in tune with the head coach and the game plan is what’s more important to Cleveland than any opponent’s timing or travel itinerary. We aren’t scheduled to hear from Stefanski or Watson again until next week. So, draw your own conclusions and enjoy your bye. Perhaps the best thing for the Browns in light of the Week 4 trainwreck is taking a few days off.
(Top photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)