Troubling trends have the Cleveland Browns looking fractured at bye week

With the Cleveland Browns enjoying a bye, there’s been ample time to dissect what we’ve seen from one of the franchise’s worst offensive units in history, regarded as the main culprit behind the team’s 2-6 record.

While my colleague Anthony Miller did a great job at pointing out how head coach Kevin Stefanski’s pupils have shown basically no improvement from last year to this one on key stats, a deeper dive into some of the numbers provided by Pro-Football Reference details even more troublesome trends.

The Browns have the second-most offensive drives in the season (90), but are dead-last in the league in percentage of drives that end with offensive points scored (25.6), which goes to show just how inefficient Stefanski’s offense has been all year. Keep in mind that the top four teams in this category in the league are at 50 percent or higher. Furthermore, Cleveland is next-to-last in net yards per drive at a measly 23.4.

Adding to this issue, is the fact that no team has punted the ball more than Cleveland (43) all season long. And, only three teams have thrown more interceptions than the Browns. So, an overwhelming amount of Cleveland’s possessions are ending with the ball being handed right back to the other team.

If we’re talking about third down conversion rate, Cleveland is succeeding only 33 percent of the time, good for 30th in the NFL.

Then, of course, we need to talk about the Browns’ wimpy passing offense. Cleveland is dead-last in the NFL in net yards per pass attempt (4.3), a metric that takes in account sacks and yards lost on sacks.

Rookie Dillon Gabriel’s average here is an almost comical 4.12, the worst in the league among qualified passers. If you take sacks out of the equation, Gabriel still comes in last in yards per pass attempt among qualified passers, at 4.9, which speaks volumes about how far he’s willing to throw the ball... not very far at all.

If we’re looking at QBR, Gabriel’s 25.8 is next to last, a hair above fellow rookie Cam Ward and his 25.7. As a team, Cleveland’s combined passer rating of 68.8 also places them last in the 32-team league.

And, just to show we’re not intent on piling up on Gabriel, we can point to the Browns’ 29th ranking with just 3.8 yards per carry, although it’s fair to assume that much of this is due to opponents stacking the box against an offense that does very little to threaten with deep passes. At 89.5 rushing yards per game, they’re better than just three other teams in this phase of the game.

Special teams haven’t been that special, either. The Browns are currently ranked 29th with an average of 23.5 return yards on kickoff returns, and 26th with an average of 7.9 yards on punt returns, as well. Cleveland is also one of four teams to have at least one punt blocked this year. Andre Szmyt’s 76.9 field goal percentage puts the Browns 23rd in the league, while his 92.3 extra point percentage places the team 26th.

At only 15.8 points scored per game, Cleveland is better than just two other franchises after Week 8.

While performance on defense has been noticeably better, the Browns are still the third-worst team in terms of committed penalties accepted, with 68.

So at a time where the conversation around the quarterback position and Stefanski’s decision not to give fifth-round rookie Shedeur Sanders an opportunity as a starter has taken a hold of the airwaves, it’s fairly easy to see that the Browns problems run a little deeper than just Gabriel’s shortcomings.

Sure, no position in sports has a larger influence on teammates’ performance than quarterback, and Sanders could theoretically shift some of these tendencies in a more favorable direction for the Browns. But, there’s just no easy fix for a franchise that might be showing signs of fracture at the upper-levels of decision making.

There’s no better time midseason to make heavy adjustments than the bye. Once Week 10 comes and the Browns suit up to play the Jets, we’ll see if this team can reverse some of these trends and start showing progress.

Otherwise, we’ll get to witness first-hand just how deep those fractures run.