(09-17-2024, 11:12 AM)Caldrac Wrote:

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(09-17-2024, 11:04 AM)Jaguarmeister Wrote: We did just play one of the leagues best defenses where the refs extended their opening drive which would have otherwise been stopped on 3rd and long with a bogus roughing call that led to their only TD of the day and had them playing with a lead all day long, exactly where good defenses want to be playing from.  Criticisms of execution along the O-line and elsewhere as well as some play calling concerns are valid, but the sky is falling crap and speculation of internal strife is ridiculous even if it's expected given the nature of this forum.  This is still a good roster dealing with some key early injuries.  The ship will get righted.

Don't want to hear it man. Cleveland's inactive list was 3x to 4x as long as ours on Sunday. They spotted you 100 yards in 10 penalties and they also had a crucial drop by Cooper on 3rd down and a fumble recovery handed back to us due to a kicker performing an illegal procedure.

Leagues best defense or not. It's year three. Pederson needs to do better. Again, the inconsistencies with his decision making. Gambled on 4th down twice on the road in Miami. Didn't gamble at all at home on 4th down while Stefanski did it 3x successfully.

How could you NOT, as a coach, want to steal one or two of those conversions back from him after he basically beat you at your own game of 4th down gambling?



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30 of those penalty yards came on their final drive which they then negated the advantage of by punting out of bounds at the 2.  You can't really do anything about a punter punting it out of bounds at the 2 aside from blocking the punt which is a very rare play.  Outside of that drive, the penalty yards were similar between the two teams. However, the bogus roughing the passer call against us led to the Browns getting spotted an additional 4 points which likely greatly affected play calls later in the game.

I don't have the percentages though I've looked at them in years past, but I'm going to assert here without the numbers that the chances of drives that start at your own 2 that wind up in points are very low.  It's a great play made by their punter which clearly affected the outcome and there's not much you can do about it on the receiving end.  It contributed mightily to the safety which in large part ended the game even though we still had a last ditch shot to win after it.  Doug/Press are situationally aggressive play callers as evidenced by the 4th and 1 from our own 32 or whatever against the phins and they were going for the homerun ball from our own 2 knowing Cleveland was going to aggressively pursue getting the safety there and leave someone 1 on 1 deep.  Criticism of that aggressiveness, or lack thereof at other times, is fair game.

Also, the timing of Engram's injury was significant as he was probably a big part of the gameplan for this week as he normally is/should be.  The Browns knew all along they'd be without Njoku and planned accordingly

All this is to say, criticisms are valid, but there's a little bit of victim of circumstance here as well.  Cleveland, a playoff team from last year, is better than people gave them credit for after the beating they took in week 1.  We just going to throw the weirdness of week 1, month 1 and interconference matchups in general out the window when it comes to other teams?  It applies league wide.  We have things to work on.  Many teams do.  We have to be better and find ways to win.  I'm with you on that, but we're not terrible because we're 0-2 and the knives aren't out in the building because of 2 close, competitive losses.  I know many like to subscribe to the soap opera of emotions that's being "leaked" about coaches, the QB and the GM from people on social media that have no clue, but relax. I don't think any of that is happening after week 2 other than discussions between coaches and players about digging deep about not making mental errors and finding a way to win this week and game planning the [BLEEP] out of this upcoming game against the Bills.  If you go to twitter/x, the majority opinion there is Doug is imminently about to be fired which is laughable.  You can't tell an overly emotional football fan otherwise though.

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