The Browns’ defense has turned into the engine behind their three-game winning streak, and the shift has been less about a single scheme than about weekly adaptation.
That wasn’t the mood around Cleveland after Week 1. The Browns opened the 2026 season by giving up 34 points to Jacksonville, and Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence spent the afternoon piling up four touchdowns. With defensive end Myles Garrett now in Los Angeles after an offseason trade and defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz at home after being passed over for the head coaching job, the unit entered the year with plenty of uncertainty attached to it.
Since that rough debut, though, the defense has settled in and delivered in three straight wins. In Week 2, Cleveland shut down Tampa Bay’s final possession to hang on for a four-point victory.
In the home opener, the Browns handled Carolina’s offense and became the only team to hold the Panthers under 30 points so far this season. Then last week, they harassed Pittsburgh quarterback Aaron Rodgers into two interceptions and five sacks in a three-point win.
A major change has come in how the Browns are covering people. After the Jacksonville game, one of the biggest talking points was how Rutenberg had Cleveland in zone coverage on 80 percent of Lawrence’s pass attempts, according to ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi. That was the fourth-highest rate by a Cleveland defense since 2023.
Since then, the Browns have gone back to leaning on man coverage, using it on 50 percent of opponents’ pass attempts. Against Rodgers, that number jumped to almost 74 percent, the highest rate by a team this season, according to Oyefusi.
Rutenberg said Thursday that the approach is about more than simply choosing a preferred coverage. It’s about building the plan around the matchup in front of them.
“Not going to go too deep into what went into it, but as we’re all learning and progressing through the season, it is week to week to week to week in the NFL, and you guys know that. You guys have been covering the NFL.
I’ll steal (Todd Monken’s) line that it’s constantly under construction. And the truth is each little week is a season, right?
Because this thing is a marathon, it’s a grind.
“And every week you’re trying to find that winning edge. You’re trying to find that winning margin.
You’re trying to eliminate the things that can hurt you, build on the things that can help you, and week to week finding your players’ superpowers, finding what can make your players go, what can make your coaches go, and then building on that week to week and then having the humility to say, ‘oh, that didn’t go as we thought, let’s work it back to this way.’ And it’s a credit to our players for constantly trying to find those inches in their game.”
That kind of week-to-week adjustment is standard NFL talk, but the Browns have shown they’re actually acting on it. The more notable part is the willingness to admit when something isn’t working and pivot quickly. For a defense that stumbled badly out of the gate, that flexibility has helped change the tone of Cleveland’s season.
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