Browns: Sacked In Final Game Of The Year
By Joe Russo
The Loss By The Numbers
7: The number of times that Davis was sacked, and most of them were not the fault of the offensive line. He held the ball far too long and did a poor job of stepping through the pocket and around pressure. Those seven sacks accounted for a total loss of 63 yards, which is a huge number for an offense that struggled to move forward anyways.
More from Cleveland Browns
- Are the Cleveland Browns a Top 10 roster heading into the 2023 season?
- There will be no more excuses for Deshaun Watson and the Cleveland Browns in 2023
- There is hope that the Cleveland Browns land DeAndre Hopkins
- 4 reasons the Cleveland Browns may in fact land DeAndre Hopkins
- The Cleveland Browns need to rock some white helmets in 2023
187: Receiving yards by Brown, with 150 of them coming in the first half. He took advantage of a battered Browns secondary that was forced to start safety Gipson at cornerback. Brown has a dream match up and took full advantage of it, speaking to the secondary issues Cleveland has had all season due to lack of quality depth in the defensive backfield.
0 and 1: The number of sacks and quarterback hurries, respectively, for the Browns on Roethlisberger. When your secondary is in shambles, you have to at least provide some kind of pass rush. Instead, Roethlisberger had all day to throw and never got moved off of his spot. There is a reason his stats look the way they do.
33:57: The time of possession for the Browns. When you win the time of possession battle, you are usually winning or at least in it. However, that is not the case for the Browns, who either settled for field goals or turned the ball back over themselves, which happened four times on the day.
76: The number of plays ran by the Browns. The problem was that the Browns averaged only 3.5 yards per play in large part due to sacks and turnovers. It is hard to run that many plays and only come away with 12 points. We have talked about the lack of playmakers before, but those numbers speak to that in volumes.
9.7: Yards per pass for the Steelers. That’s how you run only 55 plays and score the way Pittsburgh did. They have the weapons to not just throw slants and hitches, but to drive the ball downfield.
Next: Pettine Likely Coached Last Game Sunday
The Browns don’t have that.