The Cleveland Browns have a tough task on Sunday, as they take on the top-rated Kansas City Chiefs in a game that will be a shootout.
The Cleveland Browns can score on anyone and they can score a lot. It’s wild to say that, it’s even wilder to be able to prove it, but no team in the top ten in defense, has been able to stop the Browns. The Steelers, Ravens, Colts, Washington, and everyone else who met the Browns this year got torched. While the Chiefs may be good defensively, they’re not elite and the Browns have handled elite rather easily.
The Chiefs’ strength is their wizard of a quarterback Patrick Mahomes and their future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce. That’s how the offense goes. The Browns defense is bad. Not bad like a fender bender, but bad like driving a bus full of baptized puppies off of a cliff. They’re really bad.
They’re even worse without Denzel Ward on the field and with Myles Garrett still not over his bout with COVID-19. Asking the Browns defense to slow down, god forbid stop, the Chiefs offense is a tall task. So short of knee-capping Mahomes in his hotel Nancy Kerrigan style, let’s just admit right now that game-planning for Mahomes is at best a fool’s errand. It’s possible the Browns get some turnovers, but you can’t plan for that.
So, let’s get into it.
Patrick Mahomes
Throw the kitchen sink at him. I don’t mean blitz. I mean have Mack Wilson literally throw a kitchen sink at him before the game. That’s how you game plan for Mahomes.
Travis Kelce
Cleveland’s own (well Westlake’s own), Travis Kelce is going to be a pain in the butt to stop. He’s already one of the all-time greats alongside former Chief Tony Gonzales and Rob Gronkowski (many’s pick for the greatest of all time at the position) and he has five straight seasons of 1,000 yards, and seven straight seasons of at least 800 yards to his name. He’s easily Mahomes favorite target and will need to be double-teamed for most of the game.
The saving grace, the Chiefs as a unit, aren’t anything the Browns haven’t seen offensively. As far as points-per-game goes, the Chiefs are right there with the Titans, Raiders, Colts, and Ravens. All teams the Browns have faced. In theory, the Browns can meat the Chiefs point-for-point.
They have Kelce and Mahomes, and even Tyreek Hill, but after that they’re vulnerable. Of the team’s 14 wins, nine of them were close. Of the Browns’ 12 wins (counting playoffs), 10 were close. Neither team puts the other away and that means that this is going to be a shoot out.
The Browns don’t need to stop Kelce but limit what he can do. Take away anything deep and keep him and Hill in front of the secondary. The Chiefs don’t give up many sacks, so part of the hope would be to prolong the play by doubling up Kelce and Hill. That way the Browns could have an outside chance of sacking Mahomes. That’s going to be much harder without Olivier Vernon being on IR and Myles Garrett nowhere close to where he was back in the fall. He’s only mustered three sacks in eight games.
If the Chiefs beat you anywhere else, that’s part of the baggage the Browns have to deal with. They’re not good enough defensively to deal with this team, so the hope is that you cut off Kelce by making it impossible to throw to him and force Mahomes to use other weapons. It’s not a sound strategy but then again, what is against this offense?
Daniel Sorensen/Tyrann Mathieu
The combo of Daniel Sorensen and Tyran Mathieu as safeties is the biggest threat defensively. The team defense is not great. They’re 16thin the league in total points given up, they’re 12th in most rushing yards given up, and are 16th in the league in third-down conversion allowances. These are stats and figures that should be making Kevin Stefanski salivate.
The problem will come with the Chiefs being able to take plays away over the top, hence Sorensen and Mathieu. That doesn’t mean they can’t be beaten, they’re only 14th in least yards given up through the air. So they have plenty of holes defensively and if the Browns can do what they do best, and grind out long, time-consuming drives that end in touchdowns, the Chiefs will have a hard time keeping up.
The Browns offense is designed to be deliberate and time-consuming. Focusing on wearing down a defense. The Chiefs offense is high-powered with a focus on quick-strike type of plays. The problem becomes that no defense, without the help of bad weather, has truly slowed down the Browns’ offense when the offensive line is healthy.
That puts pressure on the opposing team to keep up the scoring pace. That often leads to a turnover. The Browns are 10th in the league in the league in forcing turnovers, with nearly 13% of an opponent’s drive ending with one. They make teams force bad shots just to keep up. So if the Browns can avoid the duel safety-threat, and take them out of the game, then the Browns should have no problem putting points up on the board and making the Chiefs keep pace.
This will not be an easy game for the Chiefs.