The Browns' nightmare season suffers another setback after suffering a crushing loss to the Commanders

LANDOVER, Md. – It was fair to wonder whether the Cleveland Browns might have to rely on their defense early in the season. It was completely fair to expect quarterback Deshaun Watson and play caller Kevin Stefanski to take a few weeks to push the right buttons for a few reasons. This list certainly starts with the fact that they never matched stylistically. But that's not all.

Cleveland has had problems with the offensive line – both personnel and performance – and even good O-lines take a few games to get in sync. The Browns overhauled their offensive coaching staff in the offseason, and Watson was limited until late July while he recovered from shoulder surgery. Watson's health, a lack of offensive linemen, and the upcoming training camp like a summer camp for overprivileged kids led to Watson not taking a single preseason snap.

I could go on and push the line between excuses and reality even further. But reality has now hit the Browns in the face. This is not a slow start. This isn't a single blip here and a strange circumstance there that changes the shape of the games, and it's not an occasional miss or error that derails a promising ride. This is worse than I thought, and it's worse than even the most outwardly concerned citizen or inwardly paranoid coach could have imagined.

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On Sunday, the Washington Commanders sacked Watson seven times en route to a 34-13 victory. Other times, Watson missed open receivers with errant passes and sometimes by not throwing the ball at all. On some plays he doesn't give the Browns a chance, and on other times his passes are dropped or caught behind the line while the defense waits. Clearly Cleveland wants to start with a quick play and misdirection and open up the lanes further downfield, but the result was so bad that it's difficult to even diagnose what the intent might be, not just on a down-to-down Basis, but week after week.

After the Browns were blown out of the stadium by the Commanders and fell to 1-4, a sample of five games is enough to fairly say that the team with the highest payroll in NFL history has the worst offense in the League has. And while the lack of discipline in other phases has been evident in the results of this losing streak, which now stands at three, it is the lack of productivity on offense that is putting every other area of ​​the team in a bad spot.

According to Stathead, the Browns have the worst five-game offense of any NFL team since the 2018 Buffalo Bills, at 3.8 yards per game. It was on track to be the worst in 25 years until backup quarterback Jameis Winston and D'Onta Foreman connected for 16 yards with 1:22 left.

That was the Browns' first and only third-down conversion of the day. They finished third with 1 of 13 and remain last in the league in this important and often meaningful category. They converted third downs at a rate of just under 21 percent in September.

On the first Sunday in October they took a step backwards. The numbers. The offense. Actually the whole franchise. The Commanders had the No. 30 pass defense in defense-adjusted above average in September and ranked at or near the bottom in several key defensive categories. Washington had won three straight because of its offense. For the essentially desperate Cleveland team, this was a chance to break the 20-point mark for the first time this season and possibly try to win at least a small shootout.

The Browns only brought rubber bullets. There was no shootout and there wasn't even a contested game, although the Commanders punted twice as many times in the first quarter (two) as they did in Weeks 2-4 combined (one).

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Eventually the commanders made major moves and pieced together attacks. The Browns would have completed seven straight drives in the first half had they not stumbled on a field goal early in the second quarter after starting at Washington's 43-yard line.

The Browns forced a fumble on the first play of the second half, and that felt like a necessary jumpstart to the wild comeback from a 24-3 deficit that they needed to get back into the game. But instead of scoring a touchdown and building some momentum, they got to the Washington 2-yard line, then had a false start, used a timeout, took a sack, saw Jerry Jeudy drop a touchdown pass, and surrendered then not only satisfied with a field goal, but their fourth down attempt resulted in a delay of game. The Browns didn't have the right number of players on the field and didn't want to use a second timeout in about 90 seconds with over 27 minutes left in the game, which was understandable at that point.

But you can't take those timeouts home or pick in the top five of April's draft. The season has flown by. Yes, it's still early October. There is no way but up. But in Watson's third season at quarterback, Stefanski's fifth play-calling decision and general manager Andrew Berry's fifth season at quarterback making the final roster decision, the Browns have cooked up a big nothing burger.

From the drops to the lack of a run game to Watson's league-high 26 sacks, there's plenty of blame to go around. But there was no solution either, and after scoring points on their first possession in each of the first four weeks, the Browns failed on downs on their first drive on Sunday. On their second possession, they threw a screen for a loss of seven, allowed an untouched edge rusher in the backfield on second down before Elijah Moore dropped a pass, and Watson threw the ball away on third down. It was the first of six three-pointers in the first 40 minutes of the game.

Numbers don't always tell the whole story. The fact that the Browns have their worst offense in six years in early October certainly says it all, except Stefanski won't be sharing any of it with his grandkids one day. But numbers can obscure the whole story, and they actually do that here. The Browns gained more than 3.6 yards per play on a late, meaningless completion. They scored 34:13 with 7:02 minutes left. The Commanders had already removed their quarterback at this point.

The Browns also scored a touchdown in garbage time against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1. Her first score against the Giants came on her first snap; a fumble had brought them to the New York 24-yard line. As bad as the numbers are, this offense probably actually existed worse than the numbers show. In short, the last three minutes last week in Las Vegas were this team's chance to confirm everything, get a win and give at least a glimmer of hope that this expensive and exhausting Watson experiment might still have a chance to happen function.

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They failed then. They were worse here in a game that had to be a game of redemption. Stefanski insisted afterward that he wouldn't change quarterbacks, and perhaps he wouldn't be allowed to, given the team's investment in Watson and difficult commitment to continue supporting him. Maybe he'll give up on the play and defer to new coordinator Ken Dorsey. Maybe he'll shake up the staff instead. But the time has come for the Browns to not just do something different, but to do a lot of things differently.

This is more than a nightmare. The nightmare was losing a home game to the previously winless Giants two weeks ago before a three-game road trip. This felt like not only was some warts coming to light, but that the Browns might come back to haunt them later. Instead, the spooky time has come almost four weeks before Halloween. Given Watson's contract, the money spent across the roster and the age of many of the Browns' best players, this franchise was all-in in many ways this season. But they have to realize that everything is in vain.

By the numbers, this is the Browns' worst offense since 2009, just ahead of the expansion-era 1999 Browns. The eye test shows that something resembling a different expansion-era approach might be the only way it can go. The reality is right in front of us.

(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)