PITTSBURGH, Pa. — The confusion over the Browns’ offense gained national attention on Monday night in their 26-14 loss to the Steelers.
Peyton and Eli Manning were on ESPN2 for their alternate “Monday Night Football” broadcast, affectionately known as the Manning Cast. For most of the night, the brothers couldn’t get enough of Browns running back Nick Chubb.
So with less than three minutes to go in the second quarter, and the Browns trailing 10-0, they were as perplexed as seemingly every Browns fan on Twitter that Chubb sat on the sidelines while D’Ernest Johnson picked up three carries amounting to 6 yards, and the Browns’ drive stalled at the Pittsburgh 46-yard line.
“Can we get an injury report on Chubb?” an exasperated Peyton Manning asked near the end of the second quarter. “Please tell me Chubb is injured and that’s why he’s not in the game. Can anybody explain that one to me?”
At the moment, the answer wasn’t obvious.
After the game, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said Chubb had a rib injury early in the game. He was able to play through it, but “he needed some rest,” Stefanski said.
Chubb returned on the very first drive of the third quarter for Cleveland and got the first two carries of the drive. One of those runs included a brutal stiff arm of Miles Killebrew, which had the Browns running back looking like he was dribbling a basketball and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District official Twitter account posting that Chubb “is infrastructure.”
Chubb ended the game with 58 yards on 12 carries, averaging 4.8 yards per carry.
On Monday night — and quite honestly, in most games this season — Chubb was the most redeeming quality of the Cleveland offense.
Simply put, the Browns’ passing game is broken.
Whether it’s play calling, a lack of a star receiver, Mayfield’s shoulder harness, or something else — it doesn’t matter what the reasons are. That’s just the ugly truth.
In the first half, Mayfield threw 10 straight incomplete passes, going nearly 25 minutes without a completion. Cleveland had just 91 net yards in the first half (232 in the game). Mayfield had five passes that were batted down or tipped at the line of scrimmage in the game as well, and several Browns offensive playmakers had key drops (including Austin Hooper with two on the very first drive of the game). Mayfield was also sacked nine times.
For how broken Cleveland’s offense is, the Browns still managed to get back into the game when Mayfield found tight end David Njoku for a 3-yard score with less than a minute to go in the third quarter, pulling Cleveland to within six, 13-7.
But the following Browns drive at the start of the fourth quarter, Chubb was once again on the sideline. After a 21-yard completion to Hooper, the Browns got a crucial holding penalty and Mayfield threw three straight incomplete passes before Cleveland was forced to punt on fourth-and-20.
It’s hard to live in the NFL without big-play ability, given how predictable the Browns’ offense has gotten. Any time a running back is aligned next to Mayfield, the defense knows a three-step throw is coming. All they have to do is jam the receivers. The Browns also barely ran any play-action against the Steelers, but when they did, got some good results (like that 39-yard pass from Mayfield to Donovan Peoples-Jones near the end of the third quarter).
The Browns have all offseason to figure out all the reasons and the possibilities for their offense being as inadequate as it has been all season.
But the one thing that shouldn’t take much figuring out is that Chubb should be touching the ball as much as humanly possible.
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