Cleveland Defense Was a No Show in The Browns 45-14 Loss To The Houston Texans
The Cleveland Browns Defense was a no show in Cleveland's 45-14 loss to Houston. Miss tackles, blown coverages, and unsound football cost the Browns and leaves fans wondering what is wrong with this defense on the road?
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00:00 Let's go to the Cleveland defense here for a moment.
00:02 CJ Stroud went 16 of 21 for 274, three touchdowns, no interceptions.
00:08 Davis Mills only threw it one time once he came in, but it just kind of felt
00:13 like Houston had their way with the Browns defensively.
00:18 I give them a lot of credit for the way they played up front because their
00:21 offensive line blocked far better today than it did on Christmas Eve when
00:25 Cleveland was here.
00:26 Hang in your hat, I guess, if you're Cleveland on the growth you saw this
00:31 year from Jeremiah Uso-Koromoa, I think he's got a chance to be a star in this
00:36 league.
00:37 He is a fabulous linebacker and when you lose Anthony Walker,
00:41 then you recognize how much of a blow that is.
00:45 You need somebody to not just step up at that position, but
00:49 to kind of try and fill Walker's void in his voice,
00:52 even more than just his production.
00:55 And Jeremiah has quickly become one of the most productive, but
00:59 also most respected players in that locker room.
01:02 I think Cleveland fans are gonna enjoy watching Six play for a long time.
01:06 >> Yeah, that kid's amazing.
01:07 Some of the plays he may even made tonight, and
01:09 that was kind of going back and forth during the game with my opinion,
01:12 at least, was like, if the Browns can pull this out,
01:14 it's because of Jeremiah Uso-Koromoa.
01:16 Cuz at a point where the Texans were rolling,
01:19 they had a bunch of big plays back to back, the game was kind of in flux, really.
01:24 And it was like, hey, it was kind of slipping away from us.
01:26 Jeremiah was trying to make that thing, trying to just take it back.
01:28 And he was flying around the football field and
01:30 he makes tackles in the backfield.
01:31 He covers guys in routes.
01:33 He's just a freaky athlete and he's the prototypical new age linebacker where he's
01:37 a little on the smaller side, and he just flies around and he makes tackles.
01:42 He's physical and he's smart, and that's the biggest thing.
01:44 He's just a smart player and he's in the right spot at all times.
01:47 He's fun to watch.
01:48 And that's a guy where it's like him on every level.
01:52 You have guys you can build around, right?
01:53 It's Miles Garrett, and as long as he's gonna play,
01:56 he's your cornerstone on the defensive line.
01:59 You have a linebacker now with JOK who you can build long term.
02:02 And then on the back end, you got Grant Delpitt and Denzel Ward and
02:05 MJ Emerson where you just build around those guys.
02:07 You have those foundational pieces and then you can kind of supplement them with
02:10 others.
02:12 >> Yeah, and again, we'll try to get into maybe the future of this team along the way
02:15 in the offseason, so a little more gut reaction.
02:18 Because yeah, there are plenty of reasons to continue to feel good about this group
02:22 and what they can build on.
02:23 But you can't help but ask yourself the question today of where do you go from
02:28 here?
02:29 For as well as this team played, especially in the month of December,
02:33 rest your starters last week to get as healthy as you possibly can.
02:38 That's tough, that's a bad result and
02:43 a really hard way to go into the offseason.
02:47 It stinks when you lose the last game of the year.
02:49 You get in the playoffs, you know what the stakes are.
02:52 You win and you move on or you lose and you're done.
02:55 And it doesn't matter if it's the Super Bowl or if it's the wild card round,
02:58 it stinks to lose.
02:59 But it is especially disappointing when you have momentum going into the playoffs
03:05 and just lay an egg like this.
03:07 And I give Kevin Stefanski a lot of credit for saying, hey, look,
03:11 Houston played really well.
03:13 And I kind of get the impression that both staffs,
03:16 maybe they put a few wrinkles in here and there.
03:19 But largely, again, gut reaction, watching Houston play,
03:24 that's kind of who they were all year.
03:25 They just did it really, really well today.
03:28 And watching the Browns play, that was their identity pretty much all season.
03:32 They just didn't execute today the way they have.
03:35 And so the margins of winning and losing in the NFL, man, are razor thin.
03:40 Even when the score looks like that, it wasn't a good result.
03:45 But again, I thought Cleveland played hard.
03:48 It was so-- this year as a whole, just thinking about it,
03:51 it's so odd to me that on the road, this Browns defense,
03:55 and specifically the secondary, just was frankly horrible on the road.
04:00 They were just bad.
04:01 You think back to Indianapolis, they were horrible.
04:03 You think back to tonight, it was awful in the second.
04:06 The places you can point-- and I hate talking in those terms
04:09 because these guys are athletes.
04:11 If I went out and played corner, Nico Collins
04:13 would run by me in a second.
04:14 But it's just like they're out there and you're like, man,
04:17 Denzel Ward or MJ Emerson or Greg Newsome.
04:20 Greg Newsome got cooked a couple of times today.
04:22 And it was like, what?
04:23 Where are we at?
04:24 What are we doing here?
04:25 Why is this-- why are these things happening?
04:27 We knew that going into this game, everybody
04:30 knew that their one guy who could beat you is Nico Collins.
04:32 First two drives, he's got two chunk plays.
04:35 How does that happen in the secondary where you're well coached,
04:38 you have a great defensive coordinator in Jim Schwartz,
04:41 you've been playing really good football all year long,
04:43 and then we come out and we jump on a slant on third down,
04:45 and all of a sudden Nico Collins is running Scott
04:47 free down the middle of the field.
04:48 And you're like, man, where's the disconnect?
04:51 And why does it always happen on the road?
04:53 I know that the dog pound makes a difference at home,
04:56 but where's the disconnect and why is this the case?
04:58 Because it's really tough.
05:00 And the things that haunted us all year long
05:02 came back to bite us in the tail tonight
05:04 and was the reason why we lost.
05:07 It's a great point.
05:08 And I guess I would go back and think about not simply just
05:13 black and white home and road.
05:15 Was it a certain scheme that teams that typically we just
05:20 happen to draw them at road games this year?
05:22 Did we see something repeatedly on the road
05:25 that was problematic, kind of quarterback style of offense,
05:28 whatever it might be?
05:29 We'll dive into some of that.