The Browns Have An Opportunity To Send A Message In Primetime
Photo Credit: Kareem Elgazzar via USA TODAY Sports
Before the Cleveland Browns met up with the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1, Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase dismissed his AFC North opponent by calling them a bunch of “elves”
The Browns took that disrespect, balled it up, and sent it straight back as they throttled the Bengals and won their first season opener at home since 2004.
“I’m just frustrated because I called their ass elves, and we just got beat by some elves,” a chastened Chase said after the game. Message received.
Now, when the Browns take the field at Acrisure Stadium on Monday against the Pittsburgh Steelers, they’ll have an opportunity to send another message.
The Cleveland Browns are here and they aren’t a pushover anymore. Their dominant win over the Bengals this past week was just the beginning.
Beating two divisional opponents, convincingly, in back-to-back weeks, will send that notice loud and clear.
In the past, Cleveland hasn’t gotten off to strong starts. They’ve struggled to secure that first victory and put together a solid winning streak that carries them through a season. Now, facing a schedule stacked with all three of their divisional opponents in the first four weeks of the season, a good start is more important than ever — and they can put the whole league on notice while doing so.
The key for the Browns in Week 1, and moving forward, will be their defense. It was a weak point last season, when they ranked 20th in points allowed and 14th in yards allowed. New defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz debuted a defense that limited the Bengals to 82 passing yards and 75 rushing yards this past week. The Browns limited an offense that was the sixth-best in the NFL last year in terms of points scored and seventh in total offensive yards to just under 160.
The Browns kept Joe Burrow, who recently became the NFL’s highest-paid player and is an MVP-caliber quarterback, to just 14 completions on 31 passing attempts, and they sacked him twice for a loss of 15 yards. It was quite an impressive performance for a defense that allowed an average of 296 total offensive yards in two meetings with the Bengals last season. But after Chase’s comments, the Browns were motivated, and the revamped defense under Schwartz brought the noise in Week 1. They showed what they were capable of.
“They wanted to prove a point,” Watson said of his defense after their victory. “So I know they handled what they needed to handle. Those guys are fired up. They bring the swagger. They bring the energy, and I think we’ve seen that today.”
After the shellacking the Browns put on the Bengals and a top-tier offense, Week 2 should be no different as the top-end players are proving their worth. Even after missing time in the concussion protocol, cornerback Denzel Ward turned in quality snaps on the back end, and the entire secondary limited passing opportunities and racked up tackles when they needed to.
The addition of defensive end Za’Darius Smith also proved fruitful for the Browns. Both he and Myles Garrett brought an intensive amount of pressure and recorded four quarterback hits apiece. Garrett also recorded his first sack of the season.
So the defensive performance is there, and if the Browns’ front seven can have that type of effect on the Bengals’ offensive line, imagine what they will do to a Steelers offensive line that has struggled to protect the quarterback over the last three years.
The Steelers opened the season with an excruciating 30-7 loss to the San Francisco 49ers. The Pittsburgh offense didn’t seem in sync and the defense was punished by second-year quarterback Brock Purdy.
They couldn’t stop the 49ers’ offense, and now they are getting set to face a Browns squad that has a multitude of weapons and got everyone involved this past Sunday. Not only did Watson score on the ground, he also found tight end Harrison Bryant for a score. Outside of a rough first half, where both teams battled weather issues, the Browns showed what they are capable of. Don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.
Cleveland needs to establish a strong running game behind Nick Chubb, and Watson needs to connect with all of his weapons, spreading the ball all over the field to his multitude of weapons.
If the defense can build on the performance they put together on Week 1 and parlay it into a solid Week 2 performance against a struggling offense with injury issues on national television, it will simply become a message sent to the AFC:
The Cleveland Browns aren’t coming — they’re here.
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