Week 4: Cleveland Browns at Dallas Cowboys
We will get chances earlier in the season to see how Kevin Stefanski’s offense is going to look in Cleveland with Baker Mayfield. This offseason the Cleveland Browns made a number of acquisitions to mold their 2020 offense around a model of what Stefanski had last season with the Minnesota Vikings. They added tight end Austin Hooper and even fullback Andy Janovich, A season ago, the Vikings were a run-heavy, play-action dependent team, and it propelled Kirk Cousins to a very efficient season, and the Vikings into the playoffs.
That is the model Stefanski is looking to implement in Cleveland. A play-action heavy team that uses a lot of 12 personnel like he did a season ago.
The Dallas Cowboys game is going to be perhaps an ideal test for how this offense will fare over the course of the season. The Cowboys have two impressive linebackers on the second level of their defense in Jaylon Smith and Leighton Vander Esch. They also added two intriguing pieces to their secondary this offseason, acquiring Ha Ha Clinton-Dix at the safety spot and drafting press coverage cornerback Trevon Diggs in the second round. If there is a team on Cleveland’s early slate that might be built to matchup against a team that is built around a 12 personnel-based offense, it is Dallas. It makes sense. After all, the Cowboys’ chief competition in the division, the Philadelphia Eagles, used 12 personnel more than any other team last year. Philadelphia used that grouping on 54% of their offense snaps, the only team to run that more than half the time. Two teams tied for second behind them at 35% of their plays: The Tennessee Titans, and the Vikings.
That is what the Browns are trying to build, and it is what the Cowboys are trying to stop.