Great, Good, and Ugly: 3 Cleveland Browns takeaways from Week 1

Ugly: Pass Protection

Not only was the pass protection horrendous for Watson all day, but it also appears that Jack Conklin suffered a serious knee injury and could likely be out for the entire season. 

What’s most interesting, it wasn’t Conklin’s replacement at right tackle that was the issue on Sunday, it was Jedrick Wills on the left side of the line who got beat around the edge on what felt like almost every single play.

To make things worse the Bengals could smell blood and brought a ton of pressure to try and disrupt the Browns offense. So, while Watson’s stats weren’t earth-shattering, he made a ton of plays given the pressure he was under and was lucky to only be sacked three times.

The entire first half I was thinking to myself that Wills needed to be benched and Dawand Jones or James Hudson needed to get a look at left tackle to see if they could do better. Luckily, Jones filled in fantastically at right tackle, but the issue still exists with Wills. 

What you’ll see next week is Alex Leatherwood likely moved to the active roster and a ton of help blocking off the edge via chips and double teams as T.J. Watt can ruin an entire game if you let him. 

I doubt that Bill Callahan will make a drastic change at left tackle given the injury to Conklin, but it’s a glaring weakness that this team needs to figure out if they want to be a true contender.