2018 Season | The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

You're right. I told myself that it's not worth it, to try and talk sense into posters here. I just saw the utter, complete bullshit, and couldn't help but point it out.

Go on living in your entirely bullshit, homer dome, where outside voices mean nothing, and no constructive conversation can be had. Everyone... wins?

 

For the record, I'm calling people who have self-identified as homers exactly that. Posters here, including yourself, have proudly proclaimed themselves homers. You gotta pick what offends you.

 

You weren't calling me a homer specifically, you were dealing in generalizations which you know some have been offended in the past by it...BECAUSE you know it offends them. You've said far worse to me personally. My only point was, if it gets under your skin, like it obviously does, avoid the Browns board altogether and you will put yourself in a happier place....maybe.

 

That's what makes you an....Never mind, at some point I have to take the higher road...

 

Dang man, take the lower road.
Wait I’ll do it for you. Now what would any self respecting Bears fan do. Never mind, they would tell you to fuck off,call you a moron, idiot, ignorant piece of crap . Did I leave anything out.

 

See, this is why I follow you, @gidion72.

 

When there's no substance to one's arguments, they very quickly go into personal attacks.

 

DISCLAIMER: PFF Stat Incoming.

Joe Thomas brought this up and while I'm not trying to stir the pot by any means, it harkens back to what @TopDawg had been saying all along... Baker Mayfield and the ones do not have enough time-on-task together and that's part of what's leading to all the drops. He processes so much faster than Tyrod and is willing to throw receivers open, but they spent an entire offseason taking snaps exclusively with Tyrod, who's a "see it, throw it" type of quarterback.

We can play the what-if game all day with Mayfield starting from Week 1 and what the outcome would be, but there's hardly any denying that if they were splitting reps early and/or if Mayfield had clearly distanced himself over Taylor, they'd be much more in sync right now with pass catching and timing.

The good news is, this should improve with more practice reps.

 

You had me right up to when you suggested more reps together would fix the drops. I agree more reps should place the receiver and a thrown ball in closer proximity to each other, but that (generally) hasn't been the problem. In the majority of the dropped balls I recall, the ball hit the receiver right in, or between, his hands.

 

Further . . . (at the risk of sounding Dline-esque) What constitutes a dropped ball in PFF's analysis?

To me, if it's within the wingspan of the receiver, hits him in the hands or bounces off his face face mask, then that clearly could be a dropped ball. If not, its simply a routine incomplete (inaccurate) pass and more reps together should fix this.

 

In a game of seconds and inches, you don't agree that more practice time would have the receivers and Mayfield more on the same page with regards to expecting a ball immediately or even before they come out of their breaks, versus after (with Taylor)?

I'm not trying to excuse the drops - they're maddening - and I agree... the receivers need to catch the ball. Jarvis Landry was a career 71.0% catch rate player with the Dolphins (and some bad quarterbacks). He's 51.1% this season (54.5% with Taylor, 48.0% with Mayfield).

Njoku, who's had some very untimely drops, actually has improved with the switch. He went from 50.0% with Taylor to 77.8% with Mayfield. Rashard Higgins, hitting his stride in year three, proves out the point. He worked a ton with Mayfield (and the twos). As a result, his rate with Taylor was 54.5% (near career average) and with Mayfield it's 87.5%.

 

^^^^^ A couple takeaways from looking at these receivers' catch rates...

• Antonio Callaway shouldn't be the second-most targeted player on the team (24 targets, 41.7% catch rate). I forget where I saw this suggested, but it seems that Haley is using Callaway like Hill in Kansas City. However, he's much better taking shots downfield than as an all-around utility player... that's Duke Johnson. Callaway has seen 61.8% of all snaps (191), which is too many for a guy who sat out an entire college season and missed time with injury in the preseason.
  
  
• Jarvis Landry needs to start earning his keep. His 47 targets leads the team (and is t-4th among all NFL). He's catching 51.1% and based on the source, has anywhere from 3-6 drops his season. That s**t is contagious, bruh.
  
  
• Rashard Higgins is WR2. His 19 targets are third among receivers, fourth on the team. His 68.4% catch rate is best among the team and, as stated above, his 87.5% with Mayfield is insane. He's really developing nicely in Year 3 and would continue to do so with more looks. He's played 66.7% of all snaps (206) but is only getting 10.0% of the targets on passing plays.
  
  
• Carlos Hyde should cede some carries to Nick Chubb. Today, Hyde is 4th in the NFL in terms of percentage facing an eight-man box. I suspected this was due to teams stacking against the run and counting on Taylor to beat them with his arm, but Week 4, he led the NFL in terms of how often he faced an eight-man front (54.5%). The results were an average of 3.7 YPC, 13.6% of which we for first downs, and one touchdown. Chubb had three plays, two touchdowns and a first down and posted the second-fast landspeed time for a running back this season.
  
  
• Wherefore art thou, Duke Johnson? Literally, the same story we've heard throughout Johnson's entire career... "we need to get him the ball more". The results? Two rush attempts, six pass targets in a close game. He's averaging seven looks (runs, targets) per game this year. That's down from 9.75 last season, when all we heard was "we need to get him the ball more", and below his career average of 10.2. As noted above... Callaway is taking the snaps Johnson should be seeing - reverses, shovel passes at the goal line, etc. His catch rate is down this year (56.3%) from a career average of 78.0% - the good news is his percentage with Mayfield is 75.0% (it was 37.5% with Taylor).

 

I honestly did not like the way the Browns did it from the day they traded for Taylor, and sounded off like he was HoF bound.... All I wanted was for Baker to have a fair shot at the starting job, but Hue made it clear from the get go that wasn't going to happen, there was not going to be any competition. Collaborated effort or not, it falls on Hue Jackson. He is the one that is always talking about "WE GOTTA GET TO WINNING AROUND HERE!"....Yet, he wasn't sharp enough to see the obvious? That Mayfield gives the Browns the best chance to win...Or at least make the freaking switch when Tyrod continued his horrible play in New Orleans..Nope. We just let them slip away...And almost let another one get away against the lowly Jets..smh

Beyond all the in-depth analysis, it was obvious that defenses were just smothering the Cleveland offense under Tyrod, because he simply doesn't get the ball out. Baker came in during the Jets game, and it was like a light switch. Suddenly a QB that knows how to stress a defense, and it just freed up the offense like magic. The O-line immediately got better. Taylor puts much more pressure on his offensive line than Mayfield because he can't hit the tight windows, and he holds the ball until the play breaks down and bad things happen...Hopefully those first two games don't cost us down the stretch, a loss and a tie sucks when we should have come away with 2 W's...Not all Taylor's fault, but he was awful, and shouldn't have been playing in the first place.

 

To be fair... 107 of those yards came on Chubbs' two touchdown runs against Oakland, as on the 63 he was contacted at the line of scrimmage and on the 41 he was contacted behind it.

 

^^^^^ Moral of the story... get this young man some more carries!!

 

Mm-hmm.

*adds strong safety to list of draft needs*

 

^^^^^ Also, "quick" criticism. Bro...

• Your record as a starter with Cleveland is 1-15-1
  
  
• You're the NFL's worst return man
  
  
• You're a below-average safety
  
  
• You are single-handedly responsible for surrendering some major big plays, as the defense's "angel" that cost games
  
  
• You support Hue Jackson

You can take the kid out of Michigan, but you can't take the Michigan out of the kid, I guess...

 

@SAS, For some reason, those last 2 tweets aren't showing up....

But yeah, I read about Peppers' remarks...He's taking shit from some fans because he hasn't been what you'd expect from a first rounder, and now he's making it worse. Just play ball Jabril...smh

I still think about his play in week 1. And I don't know how he couldn't score when he scooped the fumble and had only Roethlisberger to beat to the corner. I mean, he is a kick returner?? He butchered that one pretty bad, and got lucky he didn't fumble it back. That's just not a first round draft pick type play. Supposed to step up in those moments...

 

I understand he needs to play...but people need to grow tf up. What do contribute as a person when you call out someone and criticize someone in public? Completely unnecessary.

Jabrill doesn't go around calling you out for forgetting to refill the toner, twice, Brenda.

 

Do you guys ever feel like you have too many RBs? Ya know, not enough carries to go around. And if so, who could you live without?
Furthermore, maybe the Steelers would be interested...