Browns’ offensive snap counts, stats, and notes: Week 5

Below, we analyze the snap counts and stats on offense for the Cleveland Browns’ Week 5 game against the San Francisco 49ers.

• Oh, boy — what to do about Baker Mayfield? His performance on Monday Night Football was perhaps the worst of his career, a combination of his own doing, the offensive line protection, and receivers not hauling in passes. The top asset that Mayfield still has going for him right now is that he’s got a good arm that can zip passes to his receivers. But there is a whole lot wrong before that. I want to blame him for not moving off of his first read, but can I when I know he doesn’t trust his protection to hold up long enough?
• PFF described Mayfield’s big-time struggles under pressure — and my question is where the #%#$ are the checkdown receivers for exactly these types of situations?

Taking out plays that negated by penalty, Mayfield dropped back to pass 26 times, and 14 of those he was facing some type of pressure. When under duress, Mayfield put up a 30.0 passing grade, 0.0 passer rating and completed 1-of-10 passes.

Nearly 50% of Mayfield’s pressured dropbacks in 2019 have ended with him outside of the pocket (highest in NFL). His adjusted completion percentage on those passes is over 20% lower than any other quarterback in the league, and he is averaging just 1.2 yards per attempt. Last night, Mayfield had six dropbacks under pressure and outside the pocket, with one leading to a sack and the other five leading to incomplete passes. In other words, his offensive line is giving up a good amount of pressure and Baker is trying to overcompensate for it.

• The 49ers have one of the top run defenses in the NFL, but Nick Chubb still turned in a strong effort on the ground, and his one catch helped set up Cleveland in a goal-to-go situation.
• The workload is still a bit heavy for Chubb, this week at 84%. At first, I wasn’t sure how Kareem Hunt would fit in this offense, but I see more and more why he’ll be essential for those final 8 games, where it would be wise for Cleveland to become a run-dominant team to reduce the amount of times Mayfield has to drop back.

• The Browns have to find a way to get the ball to Odell Beckham Jr. a bit more. They began the game with some creative ways — first getting him to throw a pass, and then having a couple of run plays. But ultimately, he’s a Top 5 receiver in the NFL, and especially can make magic happen after catching the ball on slant or dig routes. Where have they been?
• Cleveland made the decision this week to play Antonio Callaway over Damion Ratley, and it didn’t pay off. I wanted to believe in Callaway, based on his second half of last season. But after the first interception, he wasn’t focused when it took him about 5 seconds to realize he needed to go tackle Richard Sherman. He had a false start. And then, he dropped a touchdown pass; not only that, he hit the ball in the air for the 49ers to intercept. That was the difference between a competitive 14-10 game at that point vs. what ultimately became a 21-3 game, and zapped the Browns’ momentum the rest of the way.
• Here’s the thing with Callaway: I still believe him. Was I pissed and agitated that he had the game that he did? Yes, of course. But I also remember how we wrote him off last year, only for him to rebound as a solid-and-consistent receiver. How soon can we get him back to that point?

• The Browns’ tight ends combined for a solid game against the Ravens, but it wasn’t so pretty against the 49ers. Part of that is on the playcallers — why were the tight ends matched up with defensive ends so often? Ricky Seals-Jones made a great catch early on, but his foot was out of bounds (not his fault — the pass was led to the sideline). We need fewer passes from Mayfield right to the boundary, but more passes where he trusts his athletic receivers to make athletic plays.

• The Browns’ offensive line was freaking terrible against the 49ers in pass protection — almost worse than anything we’ve seen over the years. PFF explained how everyone, except for C JC Tretter, was victimized:

As a whole, the Browns’ offensive line gave up a horrendous 50% pressure rate and recorded a poor 52.2 pass-block grade – both of which rank among the bottom-six in a single-game by a Browns offensive line in the PFF era. The only person that can walk away and say they did a decent job was center J.C. Tretter, as he had a 77.5 pass-block grade and allowed one pressure. On the other hand, the rest of the line had little to no pass-block success.

Left guard Joel Bitonio (62.7 pass-block grade), left tackle Greg Robinson (48.2 pass-block grade), right tackle Chris Hubbard (47.2 pass-block grade) and right guard Eric Kush (48.5 pass-block grade) all each recorded a double-digit pressure rate by themselves. They were getting sliced and diced on the edge and in the interior. With Baker being as bad as he has been under pressure and his forcing of some throws under duress, this offensive line needs to clean up their act if the Browns want to be the Super Bowl-caliber team the public was making them out to be.