The Browns Defense Not Being Able To Stop Carson Wentz Last Drive, Plus Kevin Stefanski's Horrible Usage Of Timeouts, Cost Dillon Gabriel A Win In His First Start
Look I'm not going to sit here and act like Dillon Gabriel is the best quarterback of all time. If we're being serious, the Browns probably found their QB2 of the future today. I hope he pans out to be elite because it'll save us an early draft pick next year, but the fact of the matter is he's still undersized and couldn't stretch the field when needed.
....with that being said, he still played well enough to win today. And Quinshon Judkins absolutely ran well enough to win today. The problem with today is not the rookie class, which appears to be excellent, rather it is what was supposed to be our strengths. I'll start with the defense. Don't get me wrong, Jim Schwartz has been great and this defense has been the reason why we're in games. But regardless of the fact that they played well most of the day, when push came to shove, we needed to stop Carson Wentz from going 80 yards in less than 3 minutes. And we couldn't stop Carson Wentz from going 80 yards in less than 3 minutes. That's a problem.
The other problem is....Kevin Stefanski. What the fuck, man? 2x Coach of the Year and that's how you manage your timeouts down the stretch? It honestly looked like Stefanski and O'Connell played cards for timeouts last night and we lost 2 of ours that the Vikings could use however they see fit. I mean, Minnesota fans had to be screaming for them to use a timeout there on that last drive, but the Browns beat em to it! It really made no sense....and it would've been nice to have an extra timeout at the end of that one, wouldn't it have.
**I'm not saying fire the guy, but this is the first time where it appears the internet has agreed upon making that call....and I can see where they're coming from. I'm still rocking with him because as dumb as he looked today, he's looked great at times for us as well. But there's zero doubt that we got out-coached this morning.
Whatever. My mindset is not that we needed to win that game because we're a contender. We're not. But what we do need to do is learn how to win. I love this rookie class, but if getting them all this experience leads to 1-16 and drafting another QB in the first round next year, then we reset once again. We should've beat the Bengals. We should've beat the Vikings. But we're just an entire organization of losers until we change that.