Cleveland Browns passing game needs Donovan Peoples-Jones

Donovan Peoples-Jones is number one in snaps played among Cleveland Browns wideouts, but is used as a blocker and is almost never targeted with a pass.

The Cleveland Browns need to involve Donovan Peoples-Jones in their game plan on Sunday versus the Los Angeles Chargers. Peoples-Jones has fallen into nearly total disuse the past two games.

Versus the Vikings, Peoples-Jones was used only as a decoy, starting and appearing on the field with 46 total snaps but having zero targets. The previous week, versus Chicago, DPJ was slightly busier, being targeted twice with two catches and leading all Browns wide receivers with 53 total snaps.

Baker Mayfield has not thrown a single incomplete pass to Peoples-Jones this entire season. However on the other side of the field, he hasn’t connected as well with Odell Beckham, Jr. In the past two games, OBJ has been targeted 16 times with seven completions and nine whiffs.

The view here is that OBJ is well on his way back to being his star self. He may not make All-Pro at this point in his career, but he is still a quality receiver who should be great for your fantasy football team and should approach 1,000 yards if he manages to stay healthy this season.

However, if you saw Baker Mayfield’s press conference after the Minnesota game, you are aware that Baker took responsibility for the lack of execution of the coaches’ game plan. In particular, most of the misses to OBJ were his fault. However, read on for some additional insight on this situation.

Mayfield didn’t mention that he’s third in the NFL in sacks, which is totally ridiculous, given the talent that exists on the Browns’ offensive line. Part of it is injuries, and part of it is facing some really tough defensive fronts. No matter, it has still resulted in disruption of the passing game.

Any quarterback will underperform if he’s sacked too many times, and right now that’s what is happening to Mayfield. He is third in the NFL with 12 sacks. When the quarterback is getting sacked too many times, the plays tend to break down, and the quarterback looks for his go-to guy. That would be Beckham, rather than Peoples-Jones.

Even so, it’s totally crazy that People-Jones has only had four targets in four games, including two starts. He leads Browns wide receivers in total snaps played, and fifth out of five in total targets with four. All four targets resulted in catches. That’s totally weird.

For the season, let’s look at the number of snaps divided by the number of targets for each of the five wide receivers. In other words, this is the average number of offensive plays before the ball is thrown to the player in question. Raw numbers are courtesy of Pro Football Reference.

• Player            Offensive Snaps   Total Targets   Snaps/Target  Catches   Catch pct
• Odell Beckham, Jr.              114                  16                 7.1                 7                 43.8%
• Jarvis Landry                          53                    6                  8.8                 6               100.0%
• Rashard Higgins                 128                   11               11.6                8                  72.7%
• Anthony Schwartz             104                     8               13.0                3                  37.5%
• Donovan Peoples-Jones  192                     4               48.0                4                100.0%

The wide receiver mix is fairly reasonable, except for Peoples-Jones. He has the most playing time, by a wide margin, and the fewest number of targets by an enormous factor.

The most likely issue is playcalling and execution. From where we fans sit, we cannot tell exactly what is going wrong, but somewhere between coach Stefanski and quarterback Mayfield, someone is calling not nearly enough plays for Peoples-Jones.

If the other team knows that the Browns aren’t throwing to Peoples-Jones the entire game, they can cover him with anyone they want and double team WR1, namely OBJ, with their best cover corners. Hence, it should not come as a surprise if OBJ’s numbers are diminished.

The numbers geeks can tell you that OBJ’s numbers have been terrible, Baker’s numbers have been terrible, and Peoples-Jones essentially does not have any numbers because he does not get the ball. The fans who understand x’s and o’s better than us geeks can explain what we’re missing, but the numbers look rather sorry from this computer screen.

Anyway, the team is 3-1, so fundamentally life is good, but it is good because of fantastic defense, not because of an aerial blitzkrieg from Baker Mayfield and the Flying Circus.

They need to fix it this week, because they will face Joey Bosa and the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday. They would love to be sure that they do not need to cover Peoples-Jones so that they can apply additional coverage on OBJ. Will the Browns give them what they want?