5 areas the Browns need to clean up during the bye week

4. Stopping the run

Stopping the run has not been a specialty of the Browns defense this season. They did much better against the Bengals but they had a couple of atrocious outings back-to-back when they gave up 202 yards to Atlanta followed by 238 against the Chargers. Of course, both games were losses — by a combined five points.

As close as they were, it’s safe to say a few more run stops might have made the difference. The front office knows this as they added Deion Jones in a trade following their loss to L.A. and signed Tyeler Davison to bolster the defense.

Jones has seven tackles and a sack and while he’s not a big run-stuffing linebacker, he’s helped since coming on board. Davison, on the other hand, is still on the practice squad and has yet to be activated during a game.

On Wednesday, general manager Andrew Berry said they almost made a trade at the deadline but things didn’t work out. Given the fact that they’ve tried to improve their defense, it would be a safe bet they might have been going after a big defensive tackle.

With no more reinforcements coming, it’s going to come down to coaching to put a scheme together that masks the inefficiency they have in run defense. They don’t have to be elite, but they simply have to be able to hold their ground — and hopefully they can use this week to come up with a plan.