brownpocalypse

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Last night, I watched most of the Monday Night game between the Browns and Ravens.  I’d decided it'd be a good idea to take some notes, effectively TV scouting the Browns.

I’m going to be real for a second here, folks: if the Lions can't beat the Browns in Ford Field, they will not win another game this season.

The Browns' offense is the most anemic, pathetic, limpid, impotent unit in football.  They have absolutely zero confidence in their quarterback.  The Browns’ gameplan for victory last night was to completely remove Brady Quinn from the equation.  I didn’t actually chart the game, but I would venture to guess—without exaggeration—that over eighty percent of the Browns’ offensive snaps were either a run, a screen pass, a TE screen, a WR screen, a bubble screen, or a Wildcat play.

It’s difficult to imagine, but Browns offensive coordinator Brian Daboll appeared to be petrified by the prospect of Brady Quinn making a read and throwing the football.  On the  few occasions where Quinn dropped back and threw a real pass, he and his receivers almost never agreed on the route to be run.  Five yards ahead, behind, outside, inside; WRs not expecting the ball, WRs expecting the ball and not getting it . . . every conceivable misfire or miscommunication occurred.  I’m going to let the numbers speak for themselves:

13 of 31, 99 yards, 0 touchdowns, 2 interceptions.

Folks, that is miserable.  13 of 31 is 41.3%--and again, he was throwing a large percentage of screen passes.  41.3% should not happen.  You know what else should not happen?  3.13 yards per attempt.  When Brady Quinn drops back to pass, you can expect an average of three yards gained . . . that would be anemic for a running game, but for a passing offense, it’s . . . apalling.

Daboll is trying like crazy, though, to disguise what he’s doing.  He’s using Martzian levels of pre-snap motion: TE from one side to the other, new strong-side slot WR to weak side split end, RB from tailback to offset FB; all on the same play!  However, once that’s all settled down, they’re either running up the middle or running a screen.  I am completely confident in the Lions’ ability to stop these guys.

The one thing that really stuck out to me was the explosive playmaking ability of Josh Cribbs.  They try to run the Wildcat with him, but the total lack of offensive threats around him stops it cold.  When Josh Cribbs fakes a handoff to undrafted free agent rookie James Harrison, is there a linebacker in the world who bites?  Even so, Cribbs often makes hay, even with insufficient daylight.  I’m neither joking nor exaggerating when I say that a full-time Cribbs “Wildcat" would be much more dangerous than their current base offense.

Of course, there is the other side of the ball, and I won't sugarcoat it: the Lions are going to struggle to run the ball against the Browns. Besides the OT-to-OT havoc we all know a motivated Shaun Rogers can wreak, and the constant penetration by former Spartan Robaire Smith, the Browns’ secondary is not afraid to get up and support the run.  CB Eric Wright is a tackling machine, and safety Abram Elam loves to lay the lumber across the middle.

In the end, though, we're talking about a team that simply can't beat anyone.  As I've mentioned in the past, there's a special quality about offense: it can beat itself.  If you can't run block, and can't complete a pass, it doesn't matter which defense is across from you.  Given the state of this Cleveland Browns offense, the Lions probably won’t need to score 10 points to win.

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why did the 400-pound chicken come home to roost? to get whatever he wants!

It puts me in a difficult spot, as a fan.  When a player like Shaun Rogers--an impossible beast who can outrun, outjump, and generally out-athlete men half his size--gets drafted by the Lions and sees immediate success, it's hard not to love him.  When you see this big doofy mug (thanks, Sports Illustrated):

How can you not love him?  When it looks like he's on his way to being one of the best players in the game at his position--maybe even on his side of the field--how can you not love him?  How can you not want to drive to Ford Field, buy a Big Baby jersey and an eight dollar beer, and holler like a Texas country boy every time he blows somebody up?

Here's the problem.

As NFL.com's Adam Schefter points out, that big fat lovable tub of badass carries a lot of baggage--and I am neither referring to Samsonite, nor the keg of flesh behind his doubtlessly-melon-sized belly button.  Rogers plays hard when he is happy, or feels he has something to prove, and that's it.  If he's not happy, doesn't feel like he's under the gun, or just plain doesn't wanna be sweet that day, he goes from being a badass to a lardass, effective purely for his size and nothing else.

We as Lions fans saw plenty of both the unblockable monster, and the wind-sucking goldbricker.  Many have correctly noted that the loss of Rogers put a dagger in the heart of a nearly-moribund defense, and the one INT we got out of Leigh Bodden in the one year he was here, can't possibly make up for the every-down impact Rogers had.  I concede that removing Big Baby from the middle of the defense created a cavernous hole, and our run defense was horrifyingly bad without him.  

However, it was only 'pretty bad' with him--and there were critical times (like the Philly game of 2007) where he was technically present on the field, but got blown off the ball by 100-pounds-lesser men.  Moreover, his play on the field is only part of the picture.  He clearly buys his own hype, and wants to be treated at all times like the lead dog--regardless of recent production or attitude.  Everything I heard while he was here was that the was a literal and physical enormous presence in the locker room, and he more or less ruled it with an iron fist.  He, like most other talented players stuck on the Millen-era Lions, grew completely sick of it all and turned the coaches out.  His influence became entirely negative; his off-field antics grew increasingly unpalatable.  Finally, his on-field play absolutely melted into nothing; he could be counted on nothing more than 20 snaps of 'meh', occasionally punctuated by a big play if the game was still close in the fourth quarter.

The Browns got most of a season of "good" Shaun Rogers, making the Pro Bowl as the rarest and most integral piece of a 3-4 defense: the nose tackle.  Now that they're building around him, Mangini has realized--too late--the importance of handling Big Baby with kid gloves.  He's seeing the problems that come with making Rogers the foundation of your defense.  And he'll find out that Rogers will find the chinks in his armor, and undermine his ability to coach.  Good luck, Mangenius, you'll need it.

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