Browns’ defensive snap counts, stats, and PFF notes: Week 3

Below, we analyze the snap counts and stats on defense for the Cleveland Browns' Week 3 game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Notes:

• Danny Shelton showed up on the stat sheet this week with 7 combined tackles, 2 of which were for a loss. Trevon Coley and Larry Ogunjobi also appeared to do good work against the run, limiting RB Frank Gore to 2.3 YPC on the day.
• PFF had high praise for both Shelton (83.9) and Jamie Meder (84.8), listing them as two of the Browns’ three highest-graded defenders against the Colts. Shelton was credited as having the 2nd-best run stop percentage in Week 3 at his position with 5 stops in 19 run snaps.
• Nate Orchard and Emmanuel Ogbah were each credited with sacks. But Ogbah’s sack was really a rollout no gain play in which QB Jacoby Brissett ran out of bounds. This club still desperately needs Myles Garrett’s presence.
• In terms of utilization, the only change this week was that Caleb Brantley saw his debut, playing on 11 snaps.

Notes:

• With Jamie Collins out, James Burgess only played 61% of the snaps. Sometimes, you don’t know what you’ve lost until he’s gone, and I think Collins’ absence was felt heavily. The first half defense looked like the bad Browns defense before the team traded for Collins.
• I saw MLB Joe Schobert back to finishing plays like he did in Week 1. He led the Browns with 8 tackles, a split with with OLB Christian Kirksey, and 2 quarterback hits. Speaking of Kirksey (84.1), PFF had him as the second-highest graded Browns defender, praising him for 3 stops in the passing game, 3 stops in the running game, and also logging a couple of pressures.
• James Burgess was credited with the forced fumble near the end of the third quarter on TE Jack Doyle that *should* have given Cleveland a chance to get back in the game, until QB DeShone Kizer gave the ball right back to Indy with a pick.

Notes:

• This has been a bad start to the year for Jamar Taylor, who has been burned by Antonio Brown and T.Y. Hilton in two of his first three games. It’s clearly not as easy being a No. 1 cornerback as he’d thought it’d be. It’s also not easy to be asked to play one-on-one coverage with a safety that is 30 yards away from you.
• Per PFF, Taylor allowed 6 catches on 8 targets for 157 yards to three different receivers. Jason McCourty graded out well for the second straight week.
• I was surprised initially that we didn’t see more of Briean Boddy-Calhoun, but the Colts only used their third receiver 50% of the time and went with a two tight end set the other 50% of the time.

Notes:

• I would plead with the Browns to see if they can get FS Ed Reynolds back; I believe enough time has passed since they released him from IR. If Gregg Williams is insistent on playing a deep safety who can come up to make a good tackle in open field, that’s precisely why Reynolds was able to patch up the position for Cleveland last year. Peppers turned Hilton’s second-quarter catch from a 30-yard gain to a 60-yard touchdown with his poor angle again.
• PFF gave Jabrill Peppers a game grade of 41.4, criticizing him for being out of position on T.Y. Hilton’s big catch-and-run touchdown, and for also committing a pass interference penalty against Hilton. PFF says that Peppers “currently has the 80^th best overall PFF grade among safeties (36.3).”
• Derrick Kindred had one big gaffe: jumping into the neutral zone on fourth down to begin the fourth quarter. That cost Cleveland three points and about three more minutes of valuable clock time. PFF pointed this out as his only gaffe of the game, though, and for the season, they say he is the top-graded safety in run defense in the NFL (91.3) and 6th-best safety overall (86.4).
• Ibraheim Campbell saw his first defensive snaps of the season.