Cleveland Browns bye week report cards: Secondary

Tavierre Thomas – D

A terrific special teamer, Tavierre Thomas was given a role on defense for the first time in his NFL career due to the injury to Kevin Johnson. He struggled mightily, and was constantly picked on by opposing QBs. It would have been a great story for him to find success, but that was unfortunately not the case. With Johnson healthy, Thomas has not logged a defensive snap since Week 4, and barring further injury, he won’t see the field aside from special teams.

Andrew Sendejo – F

Andrew Sendejo was never supposed to play nearly as much as he has, which is almost every single defensive snap. He’s been relied on to be the signal-caller in the secondary and the primary single-high safety when he was signed to play in the box. However, he has plenty of experience at FS throughout his career, so that’s not an excuse for being arguably (and there’s a very good argument for it) the worst starting safety in the league.

It seems like every game there’s at least one big pass play that he’s responsible for, and while he tries to bring a physical edge to tackling, he recklessly throws his body around and has narrowly missed severely injuring his own teammates; he did send Sheldon Richardson to the medical tent back in Week 5. That’s not a new development for him; as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2019, he sent teammate Avonte Maddox to the hospital with a concussion and neck injury that kept him out for a month,

There’s just no sugarcoating how poorly Sendejo has played, and hopefully Joe Woods decides to phase him out of the gameplan in favor of the younger guys on the roster, because the team already knows what it has in the 33-year-old, and it isn’t good.