Cleveland Browns: Takeaways on offense from the Week 4 loss

Is this offense bad because of Hue Jackson or Sashi Brown?

This is the age-old question that any struggling team fights with, and is probably the main source of tension in the front office at this point. Hue blames Sashi for not enough talent, and Sashi blames Hue for not coaching the talent properly.

The long and short of it is that both parties are at fault.

When a team is 0-4, blame is certainly spread to everyone but for these two in particular, they need each other now more than ever or we will be lucky to avoid another major change whether it’s in the front office, the coaching staff or both.

One of the things that is interesting about this season is that for some reason in the 2016 season, Hue’s offense looked better under the command of Cody Kessler. Kessler is a quarterback thought to not be able to make all of the throws in Hue’s offense, and was evident in the offseason when he failed to secure the starting job.

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With the knowledge that Kessler couldn’t make the plays Hue wanted, they ran the ball and ran quite well last season.

This year is the exact opposite. Kizer can make any throw on the field, but isn’t getting the completions. And instead of turning to the run to take the pressure off, they drop him back even more to throw it 20+ yards downfield.

The case of Cody Kessler is an interesting one. I don’t believe that Hue wanted anything to do with the selection of Kessler, but when you compare the 2016 season to this year’s team, last year’s team was a lot more competitive and actually in games last year.

This year I’m ready to turn it off when the Browns give up their token touchdowns before the half.

Sashi Brown will eventually be the one to shoulder most of the blame here. I won’t let Hue out of the doghouse just yet because his game planning is puzzling, but there’s no excuse for a team with all of the draft capital in the world to field a set of skill position players so inadequate, both on offense and in the secondary.

It’s amazing that we didn’t realize these issues sooner and actually defended this front office letting Terrelle Pryor walk. We have seen next to nothing from the 2016 draft class, and not much from anyone not named Myles Garrett in the 2017 class.

The moves the front office made look good in a vacuum, but until you start winning you lose the benefit of the doubt that good organizations get.

Next: Talking the Week 4 loss in the DPD Podcast

Unless the Browns can somehow find some playmakers to make them competitive on the offensive side of the ball we could be staring at another long season and changes in the personnel department by season’s end if the offensive inefficiencies continue.