Freddie Kitchens and the Browns still have issues to clean up despite beating the Buffalo Bills. Here are 3 prominent ones.
Beating the Buffalo Bills was great. The Cleveland Browns desperately needed a win, and they got one in Week 10. And while the team did several things well, including a focus on doing the little things better, there is still ample room for improvement from coach Freddie Kitchens and his Browns team.
If the Browns wish to keep the winning spirit when the Pittsburgh Steelers visit FirstEnergy Stadium on Thursday night, they need to do three things better than they did against the Bills.
Bad coaching decisions
Buffalo got a safety with Baker Mayfield getting sacked in the end zone on a terribly designed play for the situation. The Browns went empty backfield and had no immediate quick outlet for Mayfield if he faced pressure. High-risk plays and formations were not what the game script called for in that situation, and it cost the Browns two points.
Kitchens got snookered into a timeout at the end of the third quarter by some smart gamesmanship from the Buffalo offense. Josh Allen never had any intention of snapping the ball before the quarter was going to expire, but Kitchens bought into the sell job and burned a valuable timeout.
A later stupid call — the failed shovel pitch to Kareem Hunt that was overruled as an incomplete pass instead of a Bills TD — is a terrible idea. Mayfield has struggled with the timing and execution on those types of plays all year, and he’s throwing it to a player making his season debut. Bad, bad idea.
Those are the type of rookie coaching gaffes that need to stop. Kitchens is often too cute or doesn’t take the broader sense of the game flow and possible negative outcomes to mind.
The red zone offense remains brutal
The Browns would have handily run away with this game had they been more effective in the red zone in the first half. A series of slow-developing, obvious run plays were easily snuffed out by the Bills defense. What could have been three touchdowns instead resulted in one TD, one FG and one epic fail on fourth-and-goal from the Buffalo 1-yard line.
The Browns got those extra opportunities inside the Buffalo 2 because of defensive penalties. Two of those came on the exact same play, an out move to the corner by Odell Beckham Jr. where he was the only receiver on a route under consideration.
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Kitchens put the blame on the offensive line not performing its collective job well. He’s not wrong — the Bills defensive line dominated the line of scrimmage on those failed Nick Chubb tosses and handoffs — but the slow-developing handoffs and obvious pitch directions are too easy to defend, too.
Creating takeaways
Cleveland’s defense was really good at creating takeaways in 2018. The Browns forced 31 turnovers in 2018, second-most in the NFL. That has not carried over into the first half of 2019.
Only four teams have fewer takeaways than the Browns’ nine through Week 10. Those teams are all bad, too: Atlanta, Miami, Cincinnati and Denver. This week’s opponent, the Pittsburgh Steelers, has 11 takeaways in the last three weeks and 26 in nine games.
The playmakers on the defense need to do a better job of getting after the ball and creating more opportunities to take it away. Cornerback Denzel Ward had a chance to make a pick on the first Bills pass of the game in Week 10, but instead of playing the interceptable ball, he was flagged for pass interference. Those are the kind of plays the Browns defense needs to make.
