Cleveland Browns: 3 good things and 3 awful things from Week 1

Bonus (Bad)

Bad play calling.

Kevin Stefanski did everything in week one that Freddie Kitchens did. Instead of having faith in the running game, he largely abandoned it in the second quarter. He forced plays to go through Beckham, despite the offense clicking without him even being on the field. He ran a lot of empty sets, which was a bit confusing considering the makeup of his roster. After months of him saying he’s going to run to set up the pass, it feels like he scrapped his entire gameplan last minute because he wanted to do what all the other “cool coaches” were doing.

Take-Aways

There are reasons for panic. The Browns issues are largely expected and have been largely known since free agency opened. The defense was just flat out bad and why wouldn’t it be? They cut or didn’t re-sign their second, third, and fourth-best players from 2019 and replaced them with bargain bin contracts.

The offense has largely been a problem all training camp, with a lot of reporters citing inconsistency and that’s what we got today. Beckham’s attitude popped up and that again took away focus from the game. It’s also time to admit that he’s no longer an elite receiver. Not even close.

The team has hope, however. The offense has all sorts of weapons and when Mayfield wasn’t being forced to include Beckham like an older brother dragging his little brother around, Mayfield looked good. Stefanski needs to make adjustments and needs to stop worrying about if Beckham is happy. Who cares if he is? Worry about running plays that work.

The Browns Week 2 opponent is the Cincinnati Bengals and ugh. Why does this feel like it’s going to be a season of bad blowouts?