Well, that one hurt.
There are a lot of different directions I considered going with this bazooka point. Ultimately, I decided on an element of the defense that was exposed as a repeated weakness throughout today’s game: the inability to bring down the quarterback.
As a team, the Browns have 14.0 sacks on the year. Since, unbelievably to me, I can’t find an easily accessible list of NFL team sack leaders, I’ll compare that total to the team’s most immediate competition. The Ravens have notched 16.0 sacks thus far in 2010, and the Steelers blow both teams away with 24.0. As I’m writing this, the Steelers’ defense has just stepped on the field for the first time in the Sunday Night Football game, so that gap will likely grow even wider before week 10 ends.
This may not seem like it’s all that relevant a discrepancy. A minus -2 sack differential between the Browns and the Ravens? However, what I do NOT have is that stat that would be much more helpful: missed sack opportunities.
To me, this became, if not the most serious deficiency in today’s game, then certainly in the top 3. The team ended a game that went 74:44 with a grand total of 2.0 sacks. But I’d have to review game tape to tally the number of times Browns defenders *almost* brought down Mark Sanchez in the backfield, but couldn’t…quite…make the tackle. In many cases, they even managed to lay hands on Sanchez, but not actually sack him.
Shaun Rogers ended the game as public enemy no. 1 on this front for me; I think you could plausibly make the argument that his inability to take down Sanchez inside the Jets’ own 5 yard on 3rd down in OT was just as critical an error as Stuckey’s fumble inside field goal range a few minutes earlier.
This isn’t necessarily fair to Rogers. There were certainly plenty of other Browns defenders who failed in an identical way throughout the game. And certainly, some credit should be given to the Jets’ offensive line and Sanchez’s ability to escape trouble. But that play in overtime became, in many ways, a symbol of what i would judge a season-long weakness.
At some point during the second half, I asked via Twitter whether the Browns were more in need of an impact WR, or a line-busting LB or DE who could consistently get to the opposing QB. Those two needs may still be 1A and 1B in the 2011 draft, but at least today, I would rank the defensive hole as the more important to fill. This overtime loss to the Jets would be exhibit A in my argument.
I don’t want to be overly glum. There were definitely positives to point to. Colt (that’s right, I said it) McCoy not only threw a game-tying TD in a two-minute drill, but also completed his 3rd consecutive game without throwing an INT. For my money, any suggestion that he’s not the starter for the rest of the year is insanity. The team took arguably the best team in the league down to the absolute wire in a thrilling game that I would never have thought possible 30 days ago. Hell, they even earned the moral victory of being deemed worthy of CBS’s early game of the week national broadcast.
So the team appears to be moving in the right direction. But today’s loss is a sobering reminder that they still need play-makers on both sides of the ball. Whether or not Tom Heckert manages to find them will determine whether or not they manage to take the step next season that they’re beginning to hint they’re capable of taking.
-T
(view comments)
