Bottom of the Barrel

We are five weeks into the NFL season, and so far we certainly can’t say that everything is going as we expected. The Jaguars and Bills both have winning records. The Giants have yet to win a game. Pittsburgh’s offense can’t score, and New England’s defense can’t stop anyone. Somehow Kansas City has become the most explosive and innovative offense in the league, on the way to becoming the clear Super Bowl favorite at this point in the season.

And yet, all of these things have some explanations that are reasonable to tack on in retrospect. Buffalo and Jacksonville are loaded with talent on defense, making up for some glaring holes on offense. New York’s defense was due to regress after making a major leap a year ago, and they really don’t have anything on offense besides Odell Beckham (who has already missed a game and is now out for the season). And while Pittsburgh and New England were expected to run away with the AFC, it’s easy to blame their struggles on an aging Ben Roethlisberger and an utter lack of talent in the Patriots front seven, both of which have left the door wide open for the Chiefs.

There are some weird things happening in the NFL, but through the first quarter of the season no two teams perplexed me more than the Cleveland Browns and the New York Jets. Neither of these teams were expected to be competitive this year (according to Odds Shark they were tied with San Francisco for the worst preseason odds in the league at 300-1), and I certainly didn’t have either pegged as a playoff team. But I did have expectations for each of these teams, expectations that haven’t come to fruition so far.

The Browns have been a laughingstock since reentering the league in 1999, but after bottoming out with a 1-15 record last year I thought they would start to trend up. They have collected a lot of talented young players over the past couple drafts, and they made major investments in free agency this year. I predicted them to win 7 games and finish second in the AFC North.

The Jets on the other hand appeared to be moving in the opposite direction. They didn’t have much on their team a year ago, and what they did have they tore down, leaving them with as barren a roster as I have ever seen. I had them pegged to finish 1-15, and even that felt optimistic.

Well four weeks into the season the Jets had already surpassed that win total, and the Browns looked like they were on their way to falling far short of my prediction. Week in and week out I keep expecting Cleveland to show some sign of progress, and they keep letting me down despite a ridiculously easy schedule to start the season.

As luck would have it, these two teams played each other in week five. So I set my DVR up to record the game, and I came back and watched every play to answer two of the biggest mysteries plaguing me to this point in the season: why hasn’t Cleveland improved, and how the hell are the Jets winning games?

New York Jets

The Jets are bad. Let’s make that clear. Through five weeks they have more wins than losses, but they are still very, very bad.

I didn’t watch much of their games against the Dolphins or the Jaguars, but I can say for a fact that they were the worse team on the field against Cleveland. They were thoroughly outplayed the entire game, and the fact that they ended up with more points on the scoreboard says more about the randomness of the NFL than it does about their team.

I’m not even sure where to begin with the Jets. We could start with Josh McCown, who has absolutely no interest in throwing the ball more than ten yards down the field. Every single pass he attempts is a checkdown, to a group of receivers with no ability to create yards after the catch. They aren’t much better in the ground game, and they spent most of the game against Cleveland moving the ball in three yard chunks and then punting on fourth and short.

New York’s skill position players are abysmal, and their offensive line is nearly as bad. Over and over the Browns had players coming unblocked into the backfield, and more often than not McCown responded by blindly chucking the ball far enough from any receiver that even defenders couldn’t catch it. He does deserve credit for avoiding turnovers, and the takeaway disparity was ultimately what won New York this game.

The Jets have had a terrible offense for years, and even though this is likely rock bottom, it isn’t anything new or surprising. It is a little bit strange to see them field a defense this bad. They have no pass rush whatsoever, and they are strangely ineffective stuffing up the run as well. Muhammad Wilkerson has disappeared, and Leonard Williams hasn’t taken the next step many expected after his stellar second season. The bigger problem is likely their linebacker corps, but the absence of superstar play on the defensive line is certainly being felt.

That isn’t to say the Jets are completely lost. I looked at this roster prior to the season, and it was probably the ugliest football team I have ever seen assembled. Outside of Williams and Wilkerson I didn’t see a single player I considered to be an above average starter, and they didn’t even really have young talent I was intrigued to watch. First round pick Jamal Adams has played extremely well and exceeded my expectations, but the real difference for the Jets has been the contribution from a few veterans they picked up for nothing.

Joining Adams in the secondary is former top ten pick Morris Claiborne, a cornerback who could never stay healthy for the Cowboys but is now shining on a one year prove it deal. He had an excellent interception that set up New York’s first touchdown, which was thrown to fellow castoff Austin Seferian-Jenkins. Seferian-Jenkins isn’t good by any means, but he is better than the hollow shell that trotted out for Tampa Bay, and at 6-7 he gives this offense a target that even McCown can hit.

The preseason trade of Sheldon Richardson made a lot of waves for Seattle, but few people discussed the Jets end of things. They certainly didn’t pay much attention to Jermaine Kearse, a middle of the pack wide receiver who seemed like mostly a throw in with a second round pick. Kearse has been excellent this season, on pace to blow past his career highs in every receiving category. He had the other touchdown for the Jets this week on a well sold double move that left him wide open trotting into the endzone.

The Jets are terrible, and yet they’ve won three games, a reminder of why it is so hard to tank in the NFL. This team was built to lose as many games as possible, but every sport carries more than a little bit of randomness, and in a 16 game season that randomness can produce broad swings in outcomes. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Jets lose their final eleven games, but even if that happens they may be out of the running for the top selection in the draft.

Cleveland Browns

The Browns are going to be the death of me. I went into this expecting to find reasons why the Browns were so terrible. I expected to see everything I had predicted before the season fall to pieces, and I expected to come out of this with any hope for the future of this team stripped away. And yet, somehow, that wasn’t the case.

Let’s run through some of the reasons I was optimistic about the Browns coming into the season. The biggest reason was the young talent they’ve added. They had three first round picks this year, and they used them on three sensational athletes, headlined by first overall selection Myles Garrett and bolstered by impressive tight end David Njoku and intriguing athlete Jabrill Peppers. In addition to this, they grabbed high upside quarterback Deshone Kizer in the second round and made him their day one starter. These young pieces combined with a big money offensive line convinced me that they could have a dangerous offense as early as this season.

It isn’t that big a surprise to me that this defense has struggled. They have several good pieces up front, but the game against the Jets was the first for Garrett, and though he was excellent when he was on the field, he was still limited somewhat by injury as they work him into a full time role. The pieces on the back end are more concerning, especially with Jamie Collins out with a concussion. But the truth is, they held the Jets in check for almost the entire game, surrendering only a field goal and a touchdown on a short field in the first three quarters.

The biggest problem for the Browns in this game was offense, which is the story I heard before I even started watching the game. Cleveland failed to score any points in the first half, and they benched Kizer for second year player Kevin Hogan at halftime. I came into this expecting to see a dismal performance from Kizer, behind an offensive line still struggling to figure out their chemistry. But this wasn’t the case.

First off, the offensive line. I am one of many people who preach the importance of continuity on the offensive line, so maybe I should have been a bit more cautious jumping all over a unit adding two new starters in free agency. And there were certainly some bumps in this game, particularly in the rushing attack. They didn’t always handle their combo blocks well, and at times New York’s athletic linebackers were able to shoot into the backfield to make a play for a loss. There are certainly some issues to iron out, and right now this line is not living up to their pricetag.

But just because they aren’t performing to my high expectations doesn’t mean they’re bad. Whoever the Browns had at quarterback, he was almost always given the time he needed to sit in the pocket. Cleveland has built a wall along the front, and it will only get better as they get more reps together. The offensive line is a minor strength right now, and I am confident it will become one of the best in the league by the end of this season.

So the question becomes, why has Cleveland failed to move the ball, particularly on the ground? Isaiah Crowell is putting up only 3.1 yards per carry, after averaging 4.8 behind a significantly worse line a year ago.

In this case, I think the blame has to go to the runner. There were certainly holes available for Crowell, and his failure to exploit them highlights major issues with him as a starting running back. He is the sort of player who is good in messy situations, picking up a yard or two through contact and finishing forward in tight spots. A lot of running backs struggle to create when nothing is there, but Crowell struggles when there is something there. He doesn’t do anything on the second level, and he will occasionally even miss a running lane altogether, making life even more difficult for the men blocking in front of him.

Cleveland’s most effective running back has been Duke Johnson, but unfortunately he also happens to be their most effective receiver. Cleveland is barren of talent on the outside of well, due to another injury to Corey Coleman and the disappearance of Kenny Britt (who was quietly very good for the Rams last year). The receivers they do have are seriously lacking in speed and playmaking ability, and they often look lazy as well, rounding off simple routes and making no effort to improvise when the play breaks down.

And that brings us back to Kizer. It’s easy enough to point to this and say that he had a bad game. He finished 8 for 17 passing with no touchdowns and an interception, his fourth straight game with less than 50% completion and more interceptions than touchdowns. The Browns failed to score with him in the game, then put up 17 points in the second half when Hogan took over. And while I won’t argue that Kizer has been good so far, it isn’t fair to point the finger and say that he’s the problem with this offense.

Kizer did a lot of good things against the Jets. He showed the sort of arm strength and touch that made him my second favorite quarterback prospect in the draft, while also making plays with his legs to keep the offense moving. The Browns moved the ball pretty much at will in the first half, only to be doomed by a pair of missed field goals and two turnovers inside the ten yardline (these were both primarily Kizer’s fault, so this isn't necessarily an argument in his defense).

The offense around Kizer is atrocious, both in the skill position talent and the design of the coaching staff. Most coaches with a young quarterback do everything they can to make his life easy (see the clinic of play action and bootlegs the Bears put Mitch Trubisky through on Monday). The Browns on the other hand have decided to throw everything at Kizer at once, opening up an aggressive down the field passing attack that leaves him vulnerable to costly negative plays.

The frustrating thing was watching how the offense changed when Hogan came in. After four and a half weeks putting Kizer in an impossible situation, they greatly simplified the offense for their other young quarterback. They switched to a lot of quick hitting underneath routes to take advantage of New York’s soft coverage, and they even included a handful of read option plays, which would be deadly with Kizer’s elite athleticism.

There were still plenty of problems for Kizer. He missed some throws that he absolutely has to make, he always seemed half a second late on timing routes (though his arm was usually strong enough to make up for it), and he had a habit of bailing out of the pocket as soon as his first read was covered. But these are all common rookie mistakes, the same things you’ve seen this year from Trubisky and Deshaun Watson. The difference is that these teams have some actual talent (or the Texans do, at least), and they have coaching staffs willing to simplify things for the sake of their young passers.

The Browns have announced that they are making the switch to Hogan as their starting quarterback, a decision I can’t reasonably back up. Kizer was every bit as good as Hogan on Sunday, and despite the point totals, the Browns offense was just as functional with him taking the snaps. The talent I saw before the season is still here, and I still think Cleveland has a bright future. But I am worried about their coaching staff, and how this talent will develop in an organization that remains toxic from the top to the bottom.