From Week 9 through Week 17 of the 2018 season, only Patrick Mahomes, Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan had more touchdown passes than Baker Mayfield’s 19. Only Mahomes, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson had a higher Adjusted Yards Per Pass Attempt than Mayfield’s 8.65, and no passing offense was better, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA (opponent-adjusted efficiency metric) than Cleveland’s.
The second-half difference came after the Browns fired head coach Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley, replacing Jackson with defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, and replacing Haley with running backs coach Freddie Kitchens. Kitchens, who had never held the position of offensive coordinator at any level of football, set Mayfield up as if he’d been doing the job his entire adult life, leading the No. 1 overall pick to a season in which he broke the rookie record for passing touchdowns with 27.
Fast-forward to the 2019 season, and after three games, things are very different with Kitchens promoted to head coach and Todd Monken added as offensive coordinator. Mayfield’s completion rate has plummeted from 63.8% to 56.9%, his Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt is down from 6.77 to 4.66, he has just three touchdown passes to five interceptions, and his DVOA is down from 8.1% to minus-27.9%. The only quarterbacks less efficient than Mayfield, per FO’s numbers, are Kyler Murray, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen. That’s the guy who succeeded Mayfield as the first overall pick playing in a new offense, and two quarterbacks who play for the Dolphins.
What’s wrong? Well, just about everything. When an offense faceplants to this degree, there isn’t just one culprit. But let’s start with versatility in personnel groupings. Per Sharp Football Analysis, the Browns are running 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) on 84% of their offensive snaps. That’s one of the highest rates in the NFL, and in line with the Rams as Sean McVay has become the king of 11 personnel. In fact, the Rams, who ran 11 personnel on 94% of their plays last season, are running it just 83% of the time in 2019, as McVay endeavors to upset defenses who have stacked their schemes to counter his previous predictability.
Frequency in personnel is a disadvantage unless you’re throwing all kinds of post-snap concepts at a defense, because teams don’t generally run a ton of different looks out of the same personnel. The Browns certainly aren’t. There’s very little in the way of pre-snap motion to help Mayfield decipher man or zone coverage, and the route concepts aren’t doing him the favors they were last season.
Tempo is another issue. Last season, per Football Outsiders, the Browns ranked fifth in average seconds per offensive play — in other words, using pace to dictate to a defense and to prevent that defense from substituting personnel and creating the situational advantages. This season, the Browns rank 20th, and they’ve gone from 26.99 seconds to 29.05 seconds per offensive play. Especially late in the pre-snap phase, a few seconds can be a lifetime. Defenders have that much longer to read keys and decipher tells from the quarterback and receivers. And when you factor in Cleveland’s relative lack of explosive plays this season (explosive plays obviously take more time to unfold), it’s reasonable to assume that the Browns are taking far too long in the pre-snap phase.
The tape backs this up conclusively, as do the stats. Per Pro Football Focus, Mayfield has completed 67.9% of his passes with three touchdowns, two interceptions and a passer rating of 92.3 on pass plays in which he’s in the pocket less than 2.5 seconds. On longer-developing plays in which he’s in the pocket 2.5 seconds or more, he’s thrown for no touchdowns with three interceptions, and he has a passer rating of 48.0. Through the first three games, Mayfield has been involved in longer-developing plays 51.7% of the time.
It’s been frustrating all season. It was frustrating when Mayfield threw three fourth-quarter interceptions against the Titans in Week 1. It was frustrating when Mayfield had four downs in the red zone against the Rams last Sunday night with the game on the line, and threw three straight incompletions and a game-ending pick. It has to be frustrating for Kitchens, but at least publicly, he’s not acknowledging any systemic failures.
“I would not say anything is missing,” Kitchens said after the loss to the Rams. “It takes time to develop offensively. We kind of hit the ground running last year, because we had been through eight games already so we know what we were doing. I would say, I have to do a better job during the course of the week of putting these guys in better situations and then on game day. If you are looking to blame somebody, blame me. Do not blame any of our players. Do not blame any of our other coaches. Just blame me, because I can take it. Just blame me. Go write your article and say that I messed the game up. Go write your article and say that it is my fault that things are not looking like it did last year, because it is.”
Well, here’s the problem with that logic. The Browns hit the ground running when Kitchens was promoted from running backs coach to offensive coordinator not because everybody already knew what they were doing, but because Kitchens specifically went against what had become a stale and unfavorable offense, and gave Mayfield the looks and route combinations he needed to succeed. It was one of the more brilliant, hit-the-ground-running coaching jobs in NFL history. Everybody knew what they were doing under Jackson and Haley. Everybody also knew it was wrong.
To compare and contrast how Jackson and Haley ran the offense, let’s take this empty set from Cleveland’s 33-18 loss to the Steelers in Week 8 — the game that got them fired. It’s a designed inside screen that goes nowhere — a 1-yard loss on a pass from Mayfield to receiver Jarvis Landry. There is far too much of this happening on Kitchens’ watch in 2019, and it defies explanation.
Next, let’s take a look at another play out of empty after Kitchens took over last season. This is Mayfield’s 13-yard touchdown pass to receiver Antonio Callaway in the Browns’ Week 12 win over the Bengals.
Here, Kitchens calls mirrored route concepts to both sides — dig/wheel combinations that give Mayfield short and intermediate reads to the front and back side.
The routes are covered reasonably well — including the sit route by receiver Rashard Higgins, who’s blocked out by defensive tackle Geno Atkins, so Mayfield bails out of the pocket, with Callaway following him, and throws a dart to Callaway after the receiver pivots back to the boundary. This is a great example of a young quarterback having faith that his offense will work outside traditional structure. When you trust the offense, good things tend to happen.
Kitchens displayed a real knack for making simple route combinations work, and this touchdown pass to halfback Nick Chubb against Cincinnati shows another example. Chubb is running a drag/wheel combo with Callaway, and the intersection of the two players provides a natural rub that gives Chubb one-on-one coverage as he takes his route upfield. Bengals safety Brandon Wilson actually does a great job of sticking with Chubb through the route, but the back makes an incredible catch to seal the deal.
In Cleveland’s 28-16 Week 10 win over the Falcons, Mayfield became the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to post a passer rating over 150 with 20 or more passing attempts. Mayfield threw three touchdown passes in that game, and I loved how Kitchens helped him out by pilfering a concept from McVay: Multiple route concepts out of tight formation splits.
This touchdown to Higgins shows how tight splits give a wider field to a quarterback — especially helpful to a young quarterback who’s used to the NCAA’s wider hashmarks. But within that tight split, Kitchens isn’t just running a couple of go routes — watch how the vertical route diversity opens things up. Callaway is running a fade-stop to the right-side boundary, Landry runs a crosser from right to left and then heads up the numbers, and Higgins beats cornerback Robert Alford with the deep over. This is an optimal way to stretch the field, and Mayfield has the arm and anticipation to take advantage of these concepts.
Against the Chiefs in Week 9, Kitchens took advantage of another concept you see from McVay a lot — the double-slant combination in the red zone. This is an outstanding way to take any goal-line coverage and turn it on its head — when the deep slant receiver stems his route and draws extra attention by design, there’s often something easy for the underneath slant receiver. With Landry taking the high slot route, this is a simple pitch-and-catch to running back Duke Johnson.
Perhaps the most fascinating Kitchens-led series was the seven-play stretch in the second quarter against the Falcons where the Browns went with a full-house diamond backfield (quarterback, three running backs) every single time. Mayfield lined up both under center and in the Pistol formation. The Browns ran on the first five plays for 28 yards, and this was the first run — a 9-yarder by Johnson. Watch Johnson fake the pitch to Chubb based on the actions of defensive end Takkarist McKinley (No. 98), and how off-balance McKinley gets.
Once Kitchens got the Falcons thinking about old-school run plays and putting nine defenders in the box as a result, he dialed up this 17-yard pass from Mayfield to receiver Breshad Perriman. All Mayfield has to do here is to hit the receiver after he slants away from the cornerback and before the safety converges. The best offensive play-designers put defenses in awkward positions by tweaking space and numbers based on defensive alignment.
And as Sharp Football Analysis points out, the Browns were excellent when passing out of heavy formations in 2018 — something you’re not seeing in 2019.
So, when we move to the 2019 season, we’re seeing different things. The Browns’ offensive line is not as skilled as it was last season, predominantly because of the trade that sent right guard Kevin Zeitler to the Giants for pass-rusher Olivier Vernon. This is part of the reason Mayfield is more skittish in the pocket and more prone to bail before he needs to; another reason is that he’s not seeing the favorable concepts that gave him those easy openings last season, and it’s causing his brain to tilt. Mayfield is not yet an advanced processor — you can’t ask him to do too much too soon in this regard.
In their 23-3 win over the Jets in Week 2, Williams switched roles from Mayfield’s head coach to his schematic nemesis as New York’s defensive coordinator. Mayfield completed 19 of 35 passes for 325 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. He had seven pass plays that totaled over 20 yards, and the 89-yard touchdown to Odell Beckham Jr. was an interesting example of how to use motion and play-action to set a defense on stun.
Here, the Browns are in a 3×1 set with Beckham in the inside slot. Moving Nick Chubb from right to left in the backfield tells Mayfield it’s a zone look, as no defender moves to what is now a 4×1 alignment. Play-action freezes the linebackers, and Beckham has a free path on the deep over route past cornerback Brian Poole and linebacker Neville Hewitt. There’s nothing complicated about this play, and there doesn’t have to be, because it works — in part because Williams’ defense wasn’t aligned for a four-man matchup to the wide side of the field, anyway.
The Jets outsmarted themselves on this 33-yard pass to Beckham, as well. When Jamal Adams moves to a single-high position pre-snap, linebacker Harvey Langi stays with his curl/flat responsibility, and Beckham has a one-on-one matchup with cornerback Nate Hairston. Against Beckham, and his penchant for acrobatic catches, that’s not a favorable situation for any defensive back. Mayfield can’t wait to make this throw.
But now, things get weird. This is the next play after the Beckham catch. Here, the Browns have trips left in the red zone against New York’s tight coverage. The standard procedure here is to run a rub/pick combination to get an easy free receiver. The Browns get this in the person of receiver Damion Ratley, who works outside as Beckham goes up the chute and Jarvis Landry runs a quick slant inside. Mayfield throws quickly to Landry for an incompletion, seemingly unaware that he has Ratley wide open for the touchdown if he lets the play develop. The Browns wound up kicking a field goal at the end of their opening drive. This is the kind of limited route work common to the Todd Haley version of this offense.
The following Mayfield read against the Rams really concerned me. This is basic stuff. Wade Phillips dials up a base 3-4 defense with linebackers across the second level, and the Browns respond with an empty 3×2 set with Beckham in the left slot. Pre-snap, linebacker Dante Fowler Jr. drops off the line of scrimmage opposite Beckham, which has Mayfield thinking he’s got an easy completion on second-and-10. What Mayfield doesn’t account for is linebacker Cory Littleton jumping the route as the ball comes, leading to an incompletion. Mayfield is only a second-year quarterback, but you’d expect a quicker processing speed from a guy who had the NFL on tilt for a while last year.
And here, near the end of the first half, you’ve got receiver Jarvis Landry running a simple out-cut to get separation. It works, but Mayfield, affected by pressure, hits the throw late, and cornerback Aqib Talib easily deflects the pass. Mayfield has been affected in his timing by pressure too often, and that can’t happen at this level.
Now, let’s move to the Browns’ final offensive play of the game — the interception thrown to safety John Johnson III. The Browns have a 3×2 empty set here, and the route combination comes straight out of the Mike McCarthy “How to get your receivers covered easily in the end zone” school. This is a fourth-and-goal play to try and tie the game, so why on earth do all five receivers turn inside to the goalpost? When Mayfield moves out of the pocket to the right, he has no receivers to read. He’s sunk. There’s no way this play works unless Mayfield stays in the pocket. Given that Fowler is chasing him out right away from the backside, that’s not going to happen.
As for the notion that Mayfield could have run the ball in for a touchdown, I’m not so sure. Safety Eric Weddle, a veteran and one of the smartest defensive players in the league, gave Mayfield a spy look pre-snap before he worked coverage to his side. Both Weddle and fellow safety Taylor Rapp could have easily moved off their coverage looks if Mayfield had attempted to run. The more credible argument here is that Mayfield could have moved up in the pocket to move coverage to him, giving him a clearer read.
“[I] will look at the tape, and I will get it fixed,” Mayfield said last Sunday night. “I don’t think I have anything else besides that. We are going to get it fixed. There is no doubt in my mind. It is three games in. We have expectations that we have set for ourselves, and we have not met those. I think we need to be realistic with ourselves and know that we have not played to our capability and to our potential. We just have to be better.”
Can the Browns turn this around? I believe they can, because they already have. When Kitchens started defining the offense halfway through the 2018 season, he had everything he needed to help Mayfield succeed. The concepts were repeatable and relatively immune to opponent adjustment. Instead of throwing out those ideas and moving to whatever this offense has become, Kitchens needs to head back to what made this work, and build from there.
