Browns’ offensive snap counts, stats, and notes: Week 8

Below, we analyze the snap counts and stats on offense for the Cleveland Browns’ Week 8 game against the New England Patriots.

• You’d like to see Baker Mayfield have some better awareness on the play in which he was picked off by Lawrence Guy on a pitch forward. Other than that play, though, this might have been as good as I’ve seen Mayfield look all season. His accuracy was there, ball placement was better, and his completion percentage for back to around 65% for the day against perhaps the best defense in football.
• Still lacking? The chemistry with Odell Beckham Jr.

• This was a fantastic rushing day for Nick Chubb, and it’s so unfortunate that he fumbled on his first two touches of the game. The first was a freak play where Joel Bitonio accidentily bicycle kicked the ball out of his hands, and the second was when he didn’t expect to feel a chaser after having made several players miss on his way to the end zone. It would be nice to see Chubb find a way to transfer the ball to his other arm there, but given the rainy conditions, it’s understandable why he didn’t.
• The Browns don’t seem to want to run the ball with one of their backup running backs. When Kareem Hunt is back in two weeks, it’d be great to keep Chubb even fresher by having Hunt available to keep the momentum going. Given Cleveland’s questionable utilization of personnel, though, maybe it’ll be a challenge even getting Hunt involved.

• I’m done trying to talk about the utilization of Rashard Higgins each week. He is apparently just the fourth receiver on the depth chart now, but you saw that chemistry with Baker Mayfield as soon as he entered the game to replace an injured Jarvis Landry. The offensive pass interference call on Higgins was rubbish.
• Odell Beckham didn’t make a back shoulder catch on a third down play when the game was 24-10 in the third quarter. That forced a punt, but was one of those situations where it felt like Cleveland ruined their last chance at staying in the game. Hopefully, Beckham can explode coming up in this back half of the season, because so far we aren’t seeing it. What I’m more worried about is Freddie Kitchens possibly going to battle via the media with Beckham:

• Despite playing half of the game, Ricky Seals-Jones wasn’t targeted once.
• Demetrius Harris only played 14 snaps, but he caught and was open on the team’s lone touchdown of the game. He was also open on another deep play down the left sideline, but the ball was a hair underthrown and hit the back of the helmet of the trailing defender, otherwise Harris might have had a second score.

• The scouting report heading into the game was that Justin McCray was good against the run, but sucked against the pass. That’s exactly how things played out against New England:

• Joel Bitonio had a bad game, adding to the team’s woes that come out of no where.
• As a unit, Cleveland’s run blocking was solid. Wyatt Teller rotated some plays in with Eric Kush, but Kush still played most of the snaps.