Cleveland Browns: Safety depth rises to the challenge against Colts

The Cleveland Browns backup safeties played very well against Indianapolis

The Cleveland Browns safeties have had a difficult time this season, and injuries continue to pile up/with Karl Joseph dealing with a hamstring injury, the Browns were forced to start Ronnie Harrison at strong safety, and before Harrison suffered a concussion, he proved he should be seeing the field much more than he did over the first four games. Sheldrick Redwine, in his first defensive action of the year, replaced Harrison and promptly intercepted an ill-advised pass from Philip Rivers.

Harrison was a 2018 third-round pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars, and after two solid campaigns, he was dealt to the Browns for a fifth-rounder in 2021. He played just 25 snaps over the first four weeks with his new team, despite poor safety play from Andrew Sendejo in front of him. Harrison is primarily a strong safety but does have some experience playing free. It’s not like Karl Joseph has been a world-beater to this point either, so it is puzzling that Harrison had seen the field so little when he is a proven veteran player.

The common excuse is that he just hasn’t had enough time to learn the playbook, which may be partially true, but it’s not a good enough reason to keep him off the field. It’s also a potential fallacy, as defensive coordinator Joe Woods seems to be running an extremely vanilla scheme at this point in the season, likely due to all the injuries the defense has suffered. Either Harrison isn’t up to speed yet, or the defense is simple. Both can’t be true.

Over Harrison’s 11 snaps at Dallas in Week 4, he had one hurry on a slot blitz and then broke up a Dak Prescott pass over the middle. Harrison dropped the interception, but it was still an excellent rep for him, as he read Prescott’s eyes and felt the tight end coming down the seam, moving over at just the right time to make the play. The injury to Grant Delpit was absolutely devastating, and completely derailed with the Browns wanted to do in their secondary. Harrison is neither the athlete nor skilled player that Delpit is, but he’s almost like a Great Value version of him. So it’s very odd that he isn’t being utilized in that way.

Before leaving the Colts game with a concussion, Harrison played tight coverage near the line of scrimmage, something the Cleveland defense struggles with. He then took advantage of a poor Philip Rivers throw, returning it all the way for a huge second-half touchdown. It makes practically zero sense to keep him on the bench.

It makes even less sense for Sheldrick Redwine to not see the field on defense. Heading into Week 5, he hadn’t gotten a single defensive snap, despite Sendejo struggling ahead of him. Redwine is more of a free safety, but also has seen time in the slot. He’s still a raw player, but has good coverage instincts and was solid in limited playing time towards the end of last season. With Sendejo having issues and Kevin Johnson dealing with a lacerated liver, Redwine should at least have gotten a few snaps.

With only three safeties active for the Colts game, Redwine was thrust into action in the fourth quarter and immediately showed off those instincts by making a game-changing interception with about 11 minutes remaining, at a time when the momentum was swinging in the Colts direction. One snap doesn’t mean a whole lot, but it does show that Redwine is perfectly capable of making plays, and he’s deserving of playing time.

Woods has done such a good job of rotating his defensive line to keep those players fresh, but his rotations in the secondary have been highly questionable at best. The Cleveland defense is bad; that’s just a fact of life right now, and it will be until general manager Andrew Berry can inject more talent during the offseason. But until then, Woods needs to make things easier on himself and actually take advantage of the talented athletes that he has available. If Joseph and Sendejo were playing like All-Pros, then it might be somewhat understandable to give them all the snaps. But that is far from reality, so the young and better athletes should be playing.

Sendejo can start, and can even play the majority of the snaps. But he certainly shouldn’t be playing every single one and leading the team in snaps.

What should happen is Sendejo and Redwine more or less split the reps at FS. Harrison handles SS and moves around the field. Denzel Ward, Terrance Mitchell (until Greedy Williams returns) and Kevin Johnson are your corners. And Karl Joseph is your moneybacker, playing at or near the line of scrimmage where he is best at. Joseph was misused by the Oakland Raiders last year, playing the majority of his snaps at deep safety.

Unfortunately, the same thing is happening this season. There are ways for this Cleveland secondary to be significantly better, and that starts with Joe Woods actually playing Ronnie Harrison and Sheldrick Redwine.