CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski was blunt on Thursday about proceeding to the regular season without having played a single preseason game and how it pertains to preparing for the Ravens defense.
“Nobody shows anything in the preseason anyway,” he said.
Vanilla is the name of the game when it comes to pro football in August, so we didn’t miss a whole lot from not watching four practice games. There is one thing we did miss, however -- what does the Browns' offense actually look like?
Warren Sharp, in his massive, data-heavy NFL preview, points out how he uses the preseason to get a grasp on what formations play-callers may rely on. Specifically, he pointed to the Browns' puzzling heavy usage of 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three receivers) in the 2019 preseason and how it translated to the regular season.
As for 2020, we have a rough idea of the identity of the offense based on what Stefanski did in Minnesota. The minute he was hired, the thinking shifted to heavier personnel, meaning more tight ends, more running backs, a fullback. The moves Andrew Berry made this offseason reinforced it, paying big money for tight end Austin Hooper and adding another tight end, Harrison Bryant, in the draft; trading for fullback Andy Janovich; not prioritizing the third receiver.
Even though we haven’t seen it, we can close our eyes and envision how most of the pieces fit.
Still, it seems like a challenge to know exactly how everything goes together until it happens on the field against an opponent, something the Browns will do for the first time Sunday in Baltimore.
“Pretty good feel at what we potentially can be good at,” Stefanski said when asked if he has a feel for where everyone fits in the scheme. “We can only play one game this week, and then we have to play another one the next week. It evolves. The gameplans call for certain personnel one week and different personnel the next week. It is evolving, but I do think as a staff we have a pretty good idea of what our strengths are.”
Stefanski said the key word in all of this: evolving.
Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt felt like training camp gave them a good idea of how it all goes together.
“We were trying to figure out how guys fit and play to the strengths of our guys,” he said. “Now, I think after the month of training camp, we have a really good idea about where each guy fits and what roles they will play.”
What we see from the Browns on Sunday in Baltimore will look different from what we see against Cincinnati four days later and definitely what we see against Pittsburgh the first Sunday in January. Strategies and matchups will change week-to-week, of course, but the bones of offense will grow more sturdy and players will gain comfort within the system.
The game speeds up in phases, so there’s the offseason, full of padless practices and limited team work. There’s training camp, which ratchets up the physicality and the competitiveness. There’s the preseason, which, admittedly, not everyone participates in, but the speed picks up just a little more. Then there’s the regular season, where it all leads, where you hope the thinking can stop and the reacting can start, probably an unfair expectation for any team installing a new offensive system with lots of Zoom calls and not a lot of training camp.
Things will be clunky for all 32 teams this week. A team like the Ravens have an inherent advantage just because they know who they are and have done it at game speed.
The Browns have an idea of what it’s supposed to look like but haven’t actually seen what it looks like against an opponent geared to stop it. The goal for the Browns is long term: make it look better and better as you go along.
It’s evolution, baby.
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