Browns: 5 best offensive players of the regular season

With the regular season over, it’s time to look at the best Cleveland Browns offensive players from throughout the regular season.

The Cleveland Browns have finished up their regular season and did so by making the playoffs. While this article is being written after the Steelers playoff win, it won’t be included in the evaluation. Instead, there will be a playoff wrap-up as well, regardless of how many more games the Browns have.

For this listing, we’re looking at the totality of the players throughout the year, not just the final four games, but how each player has played overall. Some guys had good spurts over four games, others have been consistently dominant. So if you’re going to say “well so-and-so had a really good Week 17”, then you missed the point.

Let’s get this started.

5. Kareem Hunt

It is possible to be a disappointment and success all at once. I stand by everything I’ve written about Hunt and how his off-field issues still exist in the shadows of his career. However, he’s been avoiding trouble for the most part since his DUI stop last year. Not a big fan of his, but he’s kept his nose clean and that should matter to a degree.

Also, his new contract is pretty expensive for a backup and the hope was that Hunt would deliver in big ways. He delivered, but not in big ways. Hunt was, for the most part, a fine addition to the team but was not a huge playmaker. He did score 11 touchdowns but only six rushing and five in the air. With how high his usage rate was, and the fact he played every game, you’d expect those numbers to be much higher.

Not only that but Hunt developed a nasty tendency in the open field. While once considered an elusive runner, Hunt has now developed a desire to throw himself into tacklers instead of trying to evade them. To be clear, I mean throw, not run through as Nick Chubb does. It’s baffling and stalls all of his momentum while running. That could explain his career-low in yards-per-carry at 4.2, a surprisingly low number considering how good the offensive has been.

That said, he did still post 1,145 total yards but most of it was as a rusher. Many had hoped he’d top at least 500 yards receiving but that wasn’t the case. All in all, he had a good year, but he did not live up to the billing of being a “top five” running back alongside Chubb.

In fact, you shouldn’t really consider him even a top-20 back anymore.