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

2. Eliminate the finger-pointing

One of the most disappointing things about this season was the way players on defense were pointing fingers at one another following losses. There was a stretch where they surrendered several deep passes and that led to players such as John Johnson and Denzel Ward making sure they went to the media to absolve themselves of blame, which basically pointed the blame at their teammates.

Johnson later questioned the commitment of his teammates as did Myles Garrett with each wanting players to do more than simply show up to practice and leave. Ironically enough, Johnson had his worst game of the season against Baltimore following his public challenge and had one specific play where it appeared he didn’t want to tackle Gus Edwards.

As is always the case, winning cures everything and after Monday, there’s been no noise at all. Hopefully, that will remain the case going forward.

Playing defense is all about communication and the back-and-forth in the media could create distrust, which would then negatively impact that communication. Making sure they’re all on the same page is a necessity and the Browns need to spend the bye week preaching that fact.

Fixing the communication won’t solve all the issues that have plagued this defense but it would surely help. As would our final point, which also involves the defense.