For Jets, Biggest Limitation On Browns Offense is Time
The Cleveland Browns will be without four wide receivers as they take on the New York Jets, which is certainly frustrating, but the Browns have been running an offense that often utilizes three tight ends and any number of formations that could easily be adapted to use four.
Throughout the season, the Browns have peppered in looks where they use three tight ends. It's a challenge for defenses to match the personnel, forcing them to play bigger, allowing the Browns to have a strong run look as well as a dangerous play-action passing game.
Some of those looks only used one wide receiver and whether it's Marvin Hall going deep, Ja'Marcus Bradley operating in a similar function as Rashard Higgins or Jarvis Landry or Derrick Willies, who offers similar traits as Donovan Peoples-Jones, they can muddle through it.
They can also expand on Kareem Hunt's usage as a receiver, employing him much in the same way they did against the Baltimore Ravens. Splitting him out and seeing who follows him either as a decoy to empty out the box or a mismatch they can exploit.
The Browns may need to use D'Ernest Johnson more than normal to account for the increased workload for both Nick Chubb and Hunt in that scenario, which isn't a bad thing based on the small sample size he's had this season. Often utilized late in the game, Johnson has three explosive runs on his 33 carries this season, which is the same number Hunt has had on 164 carries this year.
It stands to reason that fullback Andy Janovich will see an uptick in his usage in this game. It's simply a matter of playing to the team's strengths under the circumstances. The Browns could simply opt to run over and through Jets defense at some point in the game.
The last option the Browns have is to adapt some of the condensed formations they often use to utilize four tight ends. Two of the best candidates for this are tight bunch and tight deuces, which are utilized in no small part because the Browns haven't had much explosive speed since the injury to Odell Beckham.
Both of these formations are in heavy use to try to maximize Landry, who is often used like an undersized tight end anyway. It just comes to the Browns deciding if they want to have tight ends inline or not. For example, they could swap tight bunch to tight trey so Austin Hooper can put his hand on the ground next to the tackle. They can also flex out tight ends to give them some space to operate.
The challenge with adapting these types of formations is time. The formations themselves aren't complicated, but it's entirely a question of how much extra work it would take to install concepts with them. Maybe it wouldn't require any additional effort as it's already part of the Browns offense, but it could also have the Browns in a hotel ballroom trying to do a walk through on Saturday night before some extra hours studying to try to get everything prepared.
Between an offense that is so adaptable to its players strengths and being fortunate enough to have intelligent, versatile tight ends including Austin Hooper, David Njoku who has been split out as a receiver in the past, Stephen Carlson who played wide receiver in college and Harrison Bryant, who has been utilized as a joker since his days at Florida Atlantic, the Browns should be able to flourish on offense despite limitations.
It always helps that they are playing Jets.
