Strength of schedule: Cleveland Browns 2021 Opponents whose stock has risen
By Colin Damms
The Cleveland Browns have a tough 2021 schedule that may have gotten tougher. Here are 5 opponents who appear stronger now than before the season started.
The Cleveland Browns 2021 schedule was a pretty daunting one before the season started, but once the season begins we see just what everyone is capable of.
In some cases, team stock will rise or fall unexpectedly. In the case of the former, an opponent which was deemed to be not much of a threat suddenly becomes a scary fixture. We’ve seen this happen with a handful of future opponents for the Cleveland Browns already, just a few weeks into the season.
Form doesn’t necessarily last, but these are the teams who have presented themselves as more daunting opponents than was initially thought before the start of the season.
5. Cincinnati Bengals
This is an interesting place to start for a couple of reasons, but the primary reason is that the Cincinnati Bengals are an AFC North rival, and one which has been quite manageable for the Browns since 2018.
Wins over the Bengals weren’t necessarily a given in that time, and as both fixtures last season show they were already a team capable of keeping pace at full strength, but of AFC North rivals the Bengals have been far down the list of worries for the Browns since they emerged as a competitive franchise with Baker Mayfield.
The Bengals are currently 3-1, like the Browns, and have shown in each of their games something which has been largely absent in recent years: the ability to frustrate teams defensively. The jury is still out on the Zac Taylor experiment, but after Joe Burrow’s exciting debut season the general assumption has been that the defense is the side of the ball that really needed work.
In the offseason, the Bengals added several defensive pieces, including 5 defensive backs and a pair of starting defensive linemen in Trey Hendrickson and former Brown, Larry Ogunjobi. They also drafted an additional four defensive linemen. It’s paid off fairly well so far, notably against the Steelers last Sunday in which they held their AFC North rival to just 10 points.
It’s still too early to evaluate if the Bengals are a legitimate playoff contender or not, but the signs have been there in each of their first three games that this is a team taking the next step after several years of struggling.