CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The conventional thought heading into this season for the Browns was that the offense would need all the help they can get to keep the team afloat until Deshaun Watson is allowed to play football again.
Instead, it’s the defense that’s sinking the season.
Now Kevin Stefanski faces his toughest task as head coach to get that side of the ball fixed, or at least not hemorrhaging yards and points in the fourth quarters of games that are leading to losses.
“It is my responsibility to get this fixed,” Stefanski said Monday. “We’ll spend some time talking about it and put together a plan. I do know this, I’ve seen these players in this scheme and these coaches, I’ve seen this group play winning football, winning defensive football – taking the football away, stopping the run, playing great on money downs.
“We gotta go do it. It’s easy for me to say it and us to say it. We gotta go do it.”
Stefanski’s Browns are 2-3 and Joe Woods’ unit is taking on water. The quick pound of flesh fix is to fire Woods, but that is not happening.
And it most likely won’t solve the problem either.
“It’s never one thing,” Stefanski said. “It can’t be one player. It can’t be one scheme. It can’t be one position. It’s everybody. So we gotta own it and we gotta fix it.
“We gotta make sure we look at everything.”
Sunday night, EVP/GM Andrew Berry traded for injured Falcons linebacker Deion Jones, who is due to arrive Tuesday, after watching the defense miss about 100 tackles. We didn’t count them all, but after the Browns surrendered 238 rushing yards and 464 yards of total offense, it feels like a pretty solid guess.
Even the players admit they’re not playing up to their capability on that side of the ball.
“It just comes down to will and want to, honestly,” rookie cornerback Martin Emerson Jr. said.
Over the last four weeks the Browns have allowed opponents to run for 93 yards in a 31-30 loss to the Jets, 104 yards in a 29-17 win over the Steelers, 202 yards in a 23-20 loss at Atlanta and now 238 yards in a 30-28 loss to the Chargers.
“We are five games in, and obviously, there are things that we absolutely have to address, have to look at and fix quickly,” Stefanski said. “We don’t have a bye week and you don’t have two weeks to look at this. We have to fix it quickly. We have a lot of guys who have played really good football for us. I know they want to get it fixed. I know we as coaches do, as well. We will look at it, and we will just make sure that we do everything we can to get it fixed and fixed quickly.”
