The Cleveland Browns are going to have to find ways to score with less options on the offense.
After Twitter GMs and irrational fans got their wish, moving on from Odell Beckham Jr., the Cleveland Browns are now faced with the prospect of a producing through the air with less firepower. There is going to be a ton of pressure on everyone, from the players on offense from the coaching staff, to prove that they can do something, anything resembling a productive offense. Unfortunately just removing Beckham from the equation will not magically fix the offense.
The issue is that opposing defenses have not been afraid of the Cleveland passing attack and that was with OBJ in the lineup. The difference was that while Beckham was not necessarily getting the amount of targets he should have been, he still impacted the game. In the Browns Week 5 loss to the Chargers, Beckham drew away two defenders leaving a wide open Rashard Higgins.
The gravity of Odell Beckham @NextGenStats #Browns pic.twitter.com/oC8tL78Yqa
— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) October 10, 2021
The only reason at all that Higgins was wide open was due to the defense honoring that Beckham was on the field. To put it simply, if Beckham was not on the field the defense would be defending Higgins. The defense forgot Higgins existed because Beckham was right next to him. With Beckham no longer pulling defenders in his direction these throws are no longer going to be so easy.
The fact of the matter is that the past few weeks the defenses they have faced (Arizona, Pittsburgh), have crowded the line making it more difficult to run and inviting the Browns to beat them through the air. By neutralizing the rushing attack and taking quarterback rollouts out of the equation, this has prevented Baker Mayfield from conjuring up his best Tim Misny impression leaving a lot to be desired through the air. Teams have forced Mayfield to play left-handed (from the pocket) and has been unable to make them pay. Unless that changes there is zero reason to respect their passing attack which will only make moving the ball and scoring consistently increasingly difficult for the Browns.
It’s going to be an uphill battle for the Browns offense now that they are without one of the more prolific receivers in the game. Expecting the offense to simply morph back into what it was at the end of the last year is unrealistic. The way this team moves the ball game-in and game-out is unsustainable and that falls back on the quarterback who has open receivers downfield, but is not able to see them or connect with them. This Browns team now has exponentially more pressure on them now that the “problem” is no longer on the roster. It’s put up or shut up time, no excuses.
