Stats say Cleveland Browns had trouble distributing footballs vs Vikings

The Cleveland Browns racked up a solid defensive win, despite an inability to distribute the ball on offense.

First of all, a win is a win, especially on the road, and everyone should be thrilled that the Cleveland Browns triumphed over a very tough Minnesota Vikings defense, and that the Browns defense has proven to be exceptionally tough in the early going.

As was the case against Chicago last week, the defense has carried the team. Second, this writer is a numbers geek and not a former player so this article will not tell you who is to blame, but I will tell you there has been a statistically observable problem distributing the football the past two weeks.

The offense, and especially Baker Mayfield, was hot against Kansas City and Houston, but cooled off a bit against a strong Chicago defense as well as against the tough Vikings. Give credit where credit is due. Those teams disrupted what the Browns wanted to do.

Still, against Chicago, Mayfield targeted his star wide receiver Odell Beckham, Jr. nine times in 52 snaps. He targeted the other wide receivers, namely Rashard Higgins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, and Anthony Schwartz, only five times in 121 snaps.

In other words, Mayfield targeted OBJ once ever 5.7 Snaps. Everyone else was targeted once every 24.2 snaps. That means he was 419% more likely to target OBJ than another receiver. That’s not the fault of the wide receiver, since he has no magical power to draw the football to him. The quarterback has to decide to target him.

Okay, so last week, this writer promised you that the Browns would see that obvious glitch and fix it. And they did, sort of.

Versus Minnesota, Mayfield rediscovered Rashard Higgins who was targeted seven times in 41 snaps, once every 7.29 snaps. Every year the Browns try to bury Higgins in the depth chart, only to find that the glue-fingered guy from Colorado State University is just too reliable to keep off the field. In Minnesota, OBJ was targeted seven times in 62 snaps, or once every 8.9 snaps.

That’s significantly less than in Chicago and second on the team to Higgins on a per-snap basis. So they got that part fixed. The passing game was not totally fixated on OBJ against Minnesota.

However, Donovan Peoples-Jones was on the field 46 times with zero targets, and Anthony Schwartz was on the field for 15 snaps with only one target. Either the Vikings’ coverage was elite, or Mayfield was not making his progressions. Which was it? You can comment below.

A two-game data sample is not very large. Nevertheless, in that period, OBJ has been targeted once every 7.1 snaps; Higgins once every 9.0 snaps; Schwartz once every 14.3 snaps, and DPJ once every 49.5 snaps (99 snaps and only two targets). That is a huge discrepancy. An alternate title for this article could be, why doesn’t Mayfield seem to trust DPJ?

Has DPJ been injured and is he just being used as a decoy, or what? Or does he run lousy patterns that cause Mayfield to avoid using him? In the early going, every time he has been targeted, he has made the catch 100% of the time.

That is, there have been zero incompletions for the year when targeting him, but so for there has been but they hardly ever throw the ball to him. So far, for the season, he has started two games and is the Browns wide receiver leader in total snaps with 192, but has been targeted only four times with four catches for 57 yards and zero incompletions. These numbers are not making any sense.

Speaking of numbers not making sense, versus the Vikings, the seven targets for OBJ tied for the team lead with Higgins, but the average targeting distance was 22.9 yards, according to Pro Football Focus. That says that the average pass to OBJ is a deep ball and they are resorting to it frequently, but he had only two catches for 27 yards.

On the Browns last offensive possession, they had third down and five with just over a minute to go. A first down would clinch the victory. However, their last play was an incomplete bomb to OBJ 30 yards downfield.

In fairness, he was wide open so maybe Mayfield thought it was actually the easiest way to get five yards, but the pass was a little behind OBJ and he could not quite make the catch. In any case, it seemed to represent the psychology of the game. Cleveland was looking for the deep strike to OBJ and didn’t quite make it so here we are making up excuses.

Hollywood Higgins also had seven targets but he had four catches and 63 yards, and that just seems like money in the bank. Boring old Higgins and his 63 boring old yards versus the exciting deep strikes to OBJ which were unfortunately incomplete. Admittedly, this writer is a boring old guy, and he loves both Higgs and OBJ, but 63 boring yards seems kind of okay.

So, how shall we explain the data? The following explanations fit, plus other variants you may submit in the comments sections below.

1. It’s OBJ’s fault. His charismatic power results in influencing Mayfield to make throws he might not otherwise make. This theory was seriously proposed by the national media and championed by Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports. If it sounds ridiculous, I promise we didn’t make it up. Cowherd has since attempted to walk that narrative back a bit and says he believes OBJ is a positive for Cleveland. So most of us probably don’t believe that the wide receiver controls where the passes go, but the conspiracy theory is still promoted in some quarters.
2. It’s the fault of offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and Kevin Stefanski. Do they keep designing too many plays for OBJ? If so, they need to modify the play selection because they are becoming too one-dimensional and too predictable.
3. It’s Mayfield’s fault. He wants too much to see his teammate succeed because that is the long-term best possible outcome for the team. However, if that is the case, that is wishful thinking, and he needs to make the adjustment and throw to the open receivers more.
4. It’s nobody’s fault, and the Chicago and Minnesota defense have just been awesome. They were able to shut down DPJ, and they limited OBJ’s production also. Don’t forget that neither Mayfield nor OBJ have been at 100% the past two games. If that is the case, this problem will eventually correct itself and we will see DPJ, Schwartz, and the other receivers step up, possibly as soon as this week against the Chargers.

All four of these scenarios are fixable except for number one, which basically postulates some sort of mysterious hypnotic influence that OBJ may have over the quarterback and/or coaching staff. Despite its ridiculousness, narratives such as this are impossible to disprove (similar to the “Brady hates Belichick” narrative that has generated such huge discussion for the past several months even though there is very little evidence to support it).

Against Chicago, the Browns used OBJ as the main wide receiving threat. Versus Minnesota, Higgins re-entered the picture. When Mayfield is at his best, he is like a point guard in basketball, distributing the ball all over the place, throwing it to all five wide receivers, not to mention the three tight ends and three running backs.

Next week, facing a talented Chargers team, will the Browns make better use of their secondary receivers? Will that allow OBJ to finally have the breakout game that we are all looking for?

The prediction here is yes and yes.