Browns: Odell Beckahm was open so often because he ran his own routes

Odell Beckham was a bad teammate and left his teammates hanging.

The Browns offense is based on timing and trust. Now it’s obvious why Odell Beckham was always so open; he did his own thing. Now, many will see this and think “well, what’s the big deal, guys like LeBron James do their own thing all the time”. That’s fair and you can get away with that in a sport like basketball. The Browns don’t play in the NBA.

In football, every play is rehearsed, constantly. You have to follow the instructions. It’s a sport unlike anything else. You can improvise far more often in the NBA or in soccer and hockey. In fact, that’s actually taught and coached. In the NFL, doing your own thing gets you a three-and-out or a big play touchdown against you.

So when ESPN’s Jeff Trotter revealed that Beckham had a tendency to run his own routes, hanging Baker Mayfield out to dry, it all but cemented the fact that Beckham didn’t care about the team or getting wins. Just getting stats.

"Except, Beckham had run the wrong route. Or, to put it another way, his own route.“That’s why Baker looked confused,” as one team source put it. “That’s how it was all year, which was frustrating.”"

Baker Mayfield was left high and dry by Odell Beckham

The Browns are not a team that can operate on a system of freestyling. They are an efficient and repetitive offense. Kevin Stefanski’s whole game plan is repetition, repetition, and more repetition. You may think that’s stupid, but when it works, it works very well. For Beckham to know that the entire offense is predicated on timing and trust, and still do his own thing no matter what showed that he isn’t someone who cares about the greater good.

You can’t succeed like that in the NFL. It’s partly why he hasn’t. It also explains why Mayfield didn’t throw him the ball often. Why would Mayfield throw him the ball when Beckham did his own thing? Now, you may argue that if Beckham’s open, throw him the ball. How hard is that?

Pretty hard when you have 11 200 lbs men trying to rip the ball away from you. Mayfield is doing exactly as he’s taught to do by Stefanski. He’s executing the offense as he’s instructed to do so. If he’s got his primary target open, why would he even look at Beckham, who’s on the other side of the field doing his own thing?

Now we don’t know how much of this is true and how much of it is typical spin, but there’s a reason why Mayfield has always played better without Beckham. If this is true, and there appears to be at least some empirical evidence to support that theory, then it really does paint just how awful Beckham is for a team.

If Mayfield continues with his consistency but improves his touchdowns and yards per game, then maybe fans will see that Mayfield is the right guy after all and it wasn’t him who was the issue.

If Mayfield struggles, however, this could seal his fate.

The rest of 2021 will be riveting television no matter which way the Browns go.