Cleveland Browns: 3 players key to beating the Steelers in Week 8

Cleveland Browns WR, Jarvis Landry

When Jarvis Landry arrived in Cleveland back in 2018, much was made about his helping change the culture of the Browns from a losing attitude to a winning one. Today, there is a big divide between those that believe that Landry is one of the keys to this team’s run of success over the past four years and others that argue that he is a very expensive player to have on your roster that hasn’t provided the production that they had hoped for when the player is getting paid almost $15 million a season.

What I’ve seen, disregarding the rather expensive price tag, is a player that does make a difference for this team when he is on the field and playing. He catches a lot of passes, but many are for short yardage.

He’s only averaging a little over 10 yards a catch this season. But his catches have been instrumental in moving the chains and this Browns offense. He was sidelined for several weeks when he was injured in the Houston Texans game. The team’s production from its receivers was okay but not something that was being relied on.

Insert Landry in the game last Thursday and there was a definite uptick in momentum with him in the game. He caught five passes for 37 yards. That’s not exactly knocking it out of the park for yardage but each of his grabs was moving the chains. His enthusiasm too after a catch was also evident and helped charge up his teammates.

In both contests a year ago that Cleveland beat Pittsburgh, Landry had big games. He caught five catches for 51 yards in their  24-22 victory and then came up big early in the playoff win when he took a pass from Baker Mayfield and raced 41 yards to pay dirt to help bolster that big lead they took on the Steelers.

Sunday means a lot to both teams. Landry will likely play even though he tweaked his knee in the Thursday night game and expect Landry’s efforts to be one of the highlights of the contest.