Todd Monken didn’t need much time after the Browns’ loss to the Steelers to put his finger on the issue that keeps showing up around Deshaun Watson: the pressure is coming from the middle, and it isn’t going away on its own.
Cleveland is sitting at 5-3, and while there are fair questions about how sustainable that record is, the Browns are not some empty-calorie team. They have flaws, sure. But the biggest one is hard to miss, and it showed up again in last week’s ugly loss to Pittsburgh.
Watson took eight sacks in that game, and according to ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi, seven of them came from interior pressure. At least six were directly on Watson. Too often, he drifted right into the rush instead of escaping it, a habit that has followed him since his Clemson days.
That was the backdrop for Monken’s postgame assessment, which was blunt in its own way:
“You’re gonna see the similarities each week until you get it fixed,” Monken admitted to reporters after the game.
The Browns have already tried to work around the problem. They’ve used shotgun at the highest rate in the NFL to help Watson, but that has come with a cost. It has affected their running game, and Watson’s tendency to drift backward out of shotgun makes life harder on the tackles trying to hold the edge.
The numbers tell the same story. Through eight games, Watson has been sacked 33 times, more than four per game, which is 10 more than any other quarterback in football.
Cleveland still has to keep competing at a high level, even if Watson remains the quarterback at the top of the depth chart. But the Browns also can’t afford to let this become a long-term answer. The offensive line can only cover for so much, and the Steelers showed how to attack this offense without doing anything exotic.
If anything, Pittsburgh may have handed the rest of the league a clear plan: keep coming through the interior, keep pushing the pocket, and make Watson deal with the same problems until Cleveland proves it can stop them.
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Jared Verse Is Forcing A Browns Decision Sooner Than Expected
Jared Verses first stretch in Cleveland has become a talking point for reasons the Browns probably did not expect when they brought him in. Through eight games, he still has not recorded a sack, and both his pressure rate and pass-rush win rate have sat near the bottom among qualifying players. Verse has pointed to limited chances in obvious passing situations as part of the explanation, while Browns reporter Daniel Oyefusi noted that the opponents on the schedule have also faced a high average conversion distance, which has shaped some of those game scripts.
Even with those caveats, the bigger issue is what comes next for a Cleveland defense that needs more juice up front. The Browns are now staring at two related decisions: whether to pursue another pass rusher before the trade deadline and how to handle Verses contract extension picture. His recent comments on and off the field have already produced mixed reactions, and the longer this search for answers drags on, the more pressure builds for the front office to make a call. [Read more 🡒]
Browns Slow Starts Keep Making Their Biggest Problems Even Worse
The Browns 27-6 loss to the Steelers was another reminder that their issues are piling up in the same places. Cleveland has struggled to run the ball and stop the run, and the early deficits have only made those problems harder to manage. When a team is chasing from the opening quarter, it changes everything, from how it protects the quarterback to how aggressively it can rush the passer.
Todd Monken acknowledged as much after the latest setback, pointing to the difficulty of playing from behind so often. The Browns have been outscored badly in the first quarter this season, and the timing is hardly ideal with Deshaun Watson in concussion protocol and Shedeur Sanders possibly being asked to step in. For a team already fighting to find stability, the slow starts are turning every other flaw into a bigger one. [Read more 🡒]