Cleveland Browns: 5 worst decisions from Kevin Stefanski
4. Going to the air in Green Bay
The most inexplicably bad game in Stefanski’s career came against the Green Bay Packers, a team he should have known well from his time in Minnesota.
The Green Bay game was the largest single fiasco in the disastrous season. To paint the picture for you, this game occurred while the Browns were still very much in contention for a playoff spot. These Packers were not the Packers of frozen tundra with Ray Nietzche, Henry Jordan and Herb Adderley and all those bone crushing defenders who could take on the likes of Jim Brown and Leroy Kelly.
No, this Packer team was among the NFL’s worst in rush defense in 2021. Ultimately, Packer opponents wound up with a 4.7 yards per carry average against them, completely dominating them on the ground. They were, however, much better at air defense.
Meanwhile, Cleveland had Nick Chubb and while Kareem Hunt was not available, D’Ernest Johnson was healthy and raring to go. Meanwhile, Mayfield was clearly struggling as his body was being held together by that infernal brace that did not allow him to throw accurately.
Seemed like a perfect time to run it all day, but, no, it was time for Hero Ball, apparently, for that is what the Browns attempted all night.
No. 6 had 36 pass attempts and five sacks. 21 passes were complete and four were intercepted. There were also two Mayfield scrambles for 11 yards on aborted pass plays. So, in total there were 43 dropbacks for passes. Meanwhile, they had only 23 intentional rush plays, gaining 208 yards in the process, an average of 9.04 yards per carry. D’Ernest Johnson averaged 14.50 yards per carry and Chubb contributed 7.41.
Unofficially, the Browns only ran the ball 34.8 percent of the time on a night when they were averaging over nine yards per carry while Mayfield was busy throwing four INTs and getting sacked five times. This is impossible to justify.
It doesn’t matter whether the Packers were showing an eight man front or what. The Browns were clearly blowing the feeble Packers off the line of scrimmage. How much justification is required to run the ball when your team is gaining nine yards per carry?
How can you throw the ball all over thefield and make fools of yourselves getting sacked and getting intercepted while gaining over nine yards per carry and yet you are afraid to run the ball? That was the part that was the most frustrating.
We don’t know how many times Mayfield might have changed the play at the line. It might not have been all Stefanski’s fault. Still, that brings us back to the point of the previous page. If the quarterback was that far out of control, why wasn’t Case Keenum starting instead? The Green Bay fiasco should not have been allowed to happen. It was chaos.