The Challenges of Cleveland's Defense
It turns out that NBC might very well get its “revenge game” subplot this weekend when the Cleveland Browns visit the New York Giants, as it will be former high school football teammates (Kevin Stefanski and Joe Judge) squaring off against one another while former Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens will get a chance to call plays against his old club.
If Daniel Jones doesn’t play, there will be a third spoke to the revenge angle, that being quarterback Colt McCoy against the team that drafted him. And then you also have former Giants defenders Olivier Vernon and B.J. Goodson looking to pound their chests against their old club.
That’s all well and good, but from a football perspective, the story has to be the Giants' offense and how it rebounds from last week’s awful showing against the Arizona Cardinals.
It’s not going to be easy—or pretty for that matter. Cleveland’s defense might not be a top-10 unit in the critical major statistical categories—in their last three games, they’ve allowed 25 or more points, which they were able to comb over thanks to their offense working like a fine-tuned machine—but given how sluggish the Giants offense has been of late, the Browns might not need a top-10 defense to get it done this week.
The Browns defensive front is its bread and butter and a unit anchored by defensive end Myles Garrett. Garrett ranks third on ESPN’s Top 10 DE/OLB Pass Rush Win Rate, a metric measuring how successful a pass rusher is in beating his block within 2.5 seconds.
Garrett is so quick off the snap that often he’s already gained the competitive edge before an offensive lineman has a chance to get out of his stance and set up to block him.
That’s not good news for either of the Giants offensive tackles this week who will have to block Garrett, regardless of which quarterback plays. (And if nothing else, Garrett’s presence is a good enough reason to leave Daniel Jones on the bench this week if he’s not mobile enough to escape the pass rush).
The expectation is the Giants will send several chips and double teams to slow down Garrett, which could leave old friend Vernon free to do his thing on the other side.
Another old friend, Goodson, has developed into an every-down linebacker for the Browns, but not much has changed from his days in New York in terms of his coverage skills.
I would guess that the Giants will try to exploit the short- to intermediate zones over the middle with the passing game to get the ball out of the quarterback’s hand as quickly as possible and find some potential success in moving the chains.
Last week we saw how the Cardinals shut down the Giants passing game with man-to-man coverage. Cleveland has had some injuries to its defensive backfield and has to rely more on zone of late.
This would play into the Giants’ receivers strengths assuming they can slow down that pass rush and assuming the Browns’ best cornerback at deploying man coverage, Denzel Ward, isn’t ready to return from his calf injury.
