Cleveland's run preferences vs our defense's strengths and weaknesses

[Snake]

7 hours ago, Vox said:

This is why I would be hesitant to pay Burns elite EDGE money which is what he's gonna be demanding in extension talks. Teams always run towards him and he gets abused in the run game. If he doesn't improve against the run or at least hits double digit sacks this year I would worry. *7 out of 9* of his sacks last year was when he came in completely unblocked.

I don't have anything against Burns but he's not a complete DE. He could go to a 3-4 team and prob become one of the best LBs in the league. 

[frankw]

If someone says "the run defense was not as bad as you think" I say the stats show we gave up 245 rushing yards to Dallas at 7.2 yards a pop.

[Luciu5]

2 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

We only held against Philly till they started using Hurts.

You are misremembering. Their RB was held to 45 yards. The QB had less than 4 yards per carry, which is awful for a QB. Hurts only had 30 yards on the ground. The biggest thing with him was at the goal line. And if I'm remembering right, both of his touchdowns on the ground, he was gifted with short fields. Like really short starting on our 20 fields.

With a different QB, we would have dominated that game. I mean seriously, we gave away the ball 3 times and they only put up 21 points.

 

 

TLDR stuff below. I don't blame anyone if you stop reading here because I'm just venting now.

 

I tell you, Darnold was the biggest mistake. Just looking back at the season, and specifically Darnold's performances, we would have been 7-1 going into November with just a little bit better of a QB. Last season was frustrating. The huddle doesn't blame QB play as much as it should, imho. Our defense is fine and I think most people here are morons for not understanding that. They aren't #2 but they aren't bottom of the league either.

Sam single-handedly lost us games against the Eagles, Vikings, Giants, and Patriots. Just average QB play would have had us 9-8 last year. I mean how do you get two defensive TD's and STILL lose??? Then Cam came home and was mediocre at best. We were not good enough to compete with the SB contenders, but damn all the wildcard teams could have been beaten. It would have been the step in the right direction that this fanbase needed to see. But those choose muthafuggin Sam Darnold.

[Panthers Rhule]

10 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

Losing a DB would have been more likely to hurt us against the pass than the run.

Not if you need to drop players back to help with pass coverage instead of playing the up like we were doing. 

[Davidson Deac II]

13 hours ago, frankw said:

If someone says "the run defense was not as bad as you think" I say the stats show we gave up 245 rushing yards to Dallas at 7.2 yards a pop.

Wow, that is bad.  It's as bad as when the best run defense in the league (the Aint's) got abused by Sanders and Howard of the Eagles and gave up 160 plus yards to those two on only 26 carries.  And allowed 40 points, with the help of a couple of turnovers by the offense (sounds familiar).

Edited September 8, 2022 by Davidson Deac II

[poundaway]

18 hours ago, MasterAwesome said:

This argument is confusing because you're first laying the groundwork about how statistics can be misleading and skewed and that there are other factors that can contribute to these statistics that help better explain them.  But then at the same time, you're also doing what you said not to do, and blanketly referencing statistics to support an argument in your last paragraph.  So just to be clear: can we not trust the statistic that identified us as the 8th best run defense (at least in terms of YPC) but we can trust these statistics assigning our opponents the 32nd, 31st x2, etc. rush offenses?  No need to consider all these other factors that could provide a comprehensive explanation for these low rankings for opposing rush offenses?

Its so true.  The pretzel logic makes no sense. Other teams stats are valid,  our team stats or not. Didn't you hear?  The Jets and Houston only played the Panthers last year.

[ForJimmy]

The Browns do have a strong rushing offense and the potential bad weather should be in their favor. I think we still win this one, but it will be a hard fought game…

[poundaway]

17 hours ago, trueblade said:

6 playoff teams were top 10 in rushing offense (TEN, PHI, SF, plus NEP, BUF, DAL)playoffs teams were bottom 10 in rushing offense (CIN, LV, PIT, TB, LAR)

 

 

Wait, we played 4 of the 6 playoff teams that were top 10 in rushing?

[CRA]

30 minutes ago, poundaway said:

Its so true.  The pretzel logic makes no sense. Other teams stats are valid,  our team stats or not. Didn't you hear?  The Jets and Houston only played the Panthers last year.

it's not pretzel logic to look at schedules and observe that opponents can skew what a piece of paper says about a team on the year.  The schedule is why some foolishly thought Sam Darnold was going to be good early on.   It was just weak opponents.  Sam was still Sam (which was noted when some were pretending he was good after a couple games)

some teams are dealt tougher schedules in terms of defending the run, defending the pass, etc.  Panthers had a pretty good schedule on multiple fronts last year vs some other teams. 

[poundaway]

It seems likely they are going run heavy with Brissett at QB and a powerhouse RB crew of Chubb, Johnson and Hunt in the backfield.

The Browns average 5.1 yards per rushing attempt last year.  We allowed 4.1.

The Browns did play Houston and the Lions so do their stats still count?

 

[poundaway]

3 minutes ago, CRA said:

it's not pretzel logic to look at schedules and observe that opponents can skew what a piece of paper says about a team. 

some teams are dealt tougher schedules in terms of defending the run, defending the pass, etc.  Panthers had a pretty good schedule on multiple fronts last year. 

It is pretzel logic when you apply it to us but not to other teams. 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2021/

Here are the teams that had easier SOS than us last year:

Los Angeles Chargers
Cleveland Browns
Baltimore Ravens
Tennessee Titans*
Indianapolis Colts
Miami Dolphins
New England Patriots+
Denver Broncos
Buffalo Bills*
Cincinnati Bengals*
Minnesota Vikings
New Orleans Saints
Arizona Cardinals+
Seattle Seahawks
Atlanta Falcons
Los Angeles Rams*
San Francisco 49ers+
Dallas Cowboys*
Green Bay Packers*
Tampa Bay Buccaneers*
Philadelphia Eagles+

 

 

[frankw]

1 hour ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Wow, that is bad.  It's as bad as when the best run defense in the league (the Aint's) got abused by Sanders and Howard of the Eagles and gave up 160 plus yards to those two on only 26 carries.  And allowed 40 points, with the help of a couple of turnovers by the offense (sounds familiar).

Are we supposed to be holding the Saints in high regard? They've been on the decline for the last few seasons. Now without Brees and Payton they are supposed to be getting shellacked. And we should be one of the teams giving the ass kickings but instead we have three divisional victories in two seasons.

[MasterAwesome]

27 minutes ago, CRA said:

it's not pretzel logic to look at schedules and observe that opponents can skew what a piece of paper says about a team on the year.  The schedule is why some foolishly thought Sam Darnold was going to be good early on.   It was just weak opponents.  Sam was still Sam (which was noted when some were pretending he was good after a couple games)

some teams are dealt tougher schedules in terms of defending the run, defending the pass, etc.  Panthers had a pretty good schedule on multiple fronts last year vs some other teams. 

I can respect what you were going for with that, but it was an extremely lazy and half-assed analysis to do that solely for our team and not for any of the other teams you conveniently blindly referenced as having the 32nd, 31st, etc. ranked rush offenses who we played against.  What if the 32nd ranked rush offense played against every one of the top 10 rush defenses?  Unless you evaluate every team the same way you evaluated the Panthers and then create some kind of standardized composite grade for each one (which I wouldn't expect you to do, but you opened the door for that), then your assessment is kinda useless no offense.  I think you recognized that, which is why you quickly pivoted from a statistical analysis to the "oh I trust my eyes over statistics" defense.

[CRA]

20 minutes ago, MasterAwesome said:

I can respect what you were going for with that, but it was an extremely lazy and half-assed analysis to do that solely for our team and not for any of the other teams you conveniently blindly referenced as having the 32nd, 31st, etc. ranked rush offenses who we played against.  What if the 32nd ranked rush offense played against every one of the top 10 rush defenses?  Unless you evaluate every team the same way you evaluated the Panthers and then create some kind of standardized composite grade for each one (which I wouldn't expect you to do, but you opened the door for that), then your assessment is kinda useless no offense.  I think you recognized that, which is why you quickly pivoted from a statistical analysis to the "oh I trust my eyes over statistics" defense.

Yeah, it's a message board. I'm not going to breakdown all the other 31 NFL teams when I'm simply trying to drive home a broad and general point.  

I've always said stats only tell part of any story.  

we weren't the 2nd best D in the NFL last year for example.  That's just bogus even if the official stat line might say it.  So I maintain, our D stats likely were skewed last year because of our opponents.    

That's not trashing the D lol.   I think they did a great job given the hand Matt Rhule dealt them w/ Sam Darnold.   But they were flawed last year and not great.  They were good though.   

But the eyeball test and the stats show they overly rely on the blitz for pressure, and they struggle with teams built to line up and run it at you.  Which I don't have added the bodies to solve that.  

That nitpicking our D obivously, it was good enough last year pending they had a good O.  But they had a comically sad O.