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Cleveland Browns 2020 Regular Season: What a Ride!

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Out of the Rafters at the Q said:
Not at all. What do you disagree with?

Baker was concerning. I didn't like what I saw. I saw a guy who stares down reads and still fails to see the field. If his target beats man coverage, he's got the ability to put that ball right where it needs to be. But like we saw on that interception, if there's a lurker or a zone that he's throwing into, he often doesn't see it.

I'm not calling him a lost cause. These are fixable, teachable things. I hope that being put in a situation that plays to his strengths will put him in a position where he can grow and improve, which we really didn't get a chance to see him do last year. Whether it was Kitchens, Monken, the team disaster, his own discipline... or all of the above, he appeared to regress last year. Besides not improving reads and being a professional QB, his accuracy was worse than year one.

Obviously it's a nice result. I'll take a Browns win on a Thursday night ten times out of ten. But for evaluating Baker moving forward, sometimes you have to separate what he actually did from the results.

Also, me bringing up the flaws I saw doesn't mean I'm ignoring the positives. I just think we know that he's accurate, strong armed, and can make big plays so there's no point to preface any post talking about the areas he needs to improve with those things.

What's your take?
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The only reason this wasnt a solid A game for baker was that pick in the 4th quarter. That lowered him in my book to a B+. He had 1.5 what i would consider significant mistakes. The INT and the grounding (which while technically grounding ive seen happen 100 times and almost never is a QB called for it) and the rest of the game was clean.

Besides that he was accurate- 70% completion rate, made quick reads, and hit the big play when he needed to. He wasnt ask to win the game instead he was ask to be a competent QB, and thats exactly what he was. His 9.5 Y/A over a full season would have ranked him 2nd in the NFL from last year. Not sure what game you were watching, maybe it was a replay of last week? but the rest of us saw the same QB from 2018 that could actually be a franchise QB
 
bob2the2nd said:
The only reason this wasnt a solid A game for baker was that pick in the 4th quarter. That lowered him in my book to a B+. He had 1.5 what i would consider significant mistakes. The INT and the grounding (which while technically grounding ive seen happen 100 times and almost never is a QB called for it) and the rest of the game was clean.

Besides that he was accurate- 70% completion rate, made quick reads, and hit the big play when he needed to. He wasnt ask to win the game instead he was ask to be a competent QB, and thats exactly what he was. His 9.5 Y/A over a full season would have ranked him 2nd in the NFL from last year. Not sure what game you were watching, maybe it was a replay of last week? but the rest of us saw the same QB from 2018 that could actually be a franchise QB
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Yeah and on top of that it was clear as day he was going through his reads extremely fast the whole game.

I think he started like 9/10 or something like that? Rafters wasn’t watching the same football game I don’t think.
 
bob2the2nd said:
The only reason this wasnt a solid A game for baker was that pick in the 4th quarter. That lowered him in my book to a B+. He had 1.5 what i would consider significant mistakes. The INT and the grounding (which while technically grounding ive seen happen 100 times and almost never is a QB called for it) and the rest of the game was clean.

Besides that he was accurate- 70% completion rate, made quick reads, and hit the big play when he needed to. He wasnt ask to win the game instead he was ask to be a competent QB, and thats exactly what he was. His 9.5 Y/A over a full season would have ranked him 2nd in the NFL from last year. Not sure what game you were watching, maybe it was a replay of last week? but the rest of us saw the same QB from 2018 that could actually be a franchise QB
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I actually thought "grounding" the second he threw that ball simply because it was so far short of the LOS - most potential grounding calls are not that obvious, and there's a really issue whether they reach the LOC. But as far short of the LOS as Baker's throw was, I looked, saw all linemen, and felt sure they'd call it. The pick was bad, but I can live with it.

His overall accuracy was just outstanding, and I really liked Stefanski's decision to have him do more rollouts out of play action early on.

Given how short the offseason was, and the complete lack of any preseason games, every game is much more important than usual in terms of players -- especially Baker -- becoming progressively more comfortable in this offense. Successful plays -- and there were a lot of them -- are especially valuable to confirm timing, etc.. If you're getting blown up, you don't have the chance to reinforce success by repetition.
 
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Out of the Rafters at the Q said:
I'm not sure I've seen a player look more washed on defense. It's like we're playing with 10 guys out there.


Where's my informative rating?
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The craziest thing is I think Goodson and Takitaki might both be worse than Sendejo. Goodson was getting picked on by a rookie QB and backup TEs all second half. Guy can’t cover anything.
 
Triplethreat said:
Yeah and on top of that it was clear as day he was going through his reads extremely fast the whole game.

I think he started like 9/10 or something like that? Rafters wasn’t watching the same football game I don’t think.
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It was a totally different Baker then we saw all of last year. I think one of the reason some casual fans may not appreciate what he did last night was becuase how much Cincy was on offense and the number of throws they had to make. Cincy had a huge advantage in time of possession (34/26) and threw the ball 61 times vs Baker at 23. Yet we had more yards. I have a feeling the national media is going to be all over Burrow and how he outplayed Baker but I totally disagree. Outside of the bad INT Baker played almost a perfect game. For Cincy, they could not complete any long plays against probably the worst defense they will see all year. The short quick pass won’t work them once they play a good defense.
 
I will add, this was probably one of the best play calling games I have seen from a Cleveland team all year long. Everything seemed to fit and work. Outside of the goal line calls, and maybe that Play Action with the INT great play calling. I think on defense we are going to be in the bottom half of the league, but I get the sense with how depleted the LB corps is and the secondary we are not blitzing as much as we would normally. We got pretty good pressure with 4 guys, I think once we get Greedy and Mack back we will se more blitzing.
 
gijimbo said:
The craziest thing is I think Goodson and Takitaki might both be worse than Sendejo. Goodson was getting picked on by a rookie QB and backup TEs all second half. Guy can’t cover anything.
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Takitaki is more like takataka.

Once of the very few Swahili words I know....
 
Offense was great outside of Bakers bad decision where he didnt see the backside safety.

This defense behind the line might be one of the worst in football. The line got great pressure and beat up Burrow all night.

Backup TE's picking apart our LB's, and receivers running open all game.

Not sure what can be done in season, if anything. I know we have a few guys that should come back from injury. But it's going to be a long, frustrating season watching those guys and we're going to need 35 points a game to beat a lot of teams.
 
Is Sendejo moving from special teams to starting safety why we kept getting gashed on returns? Seems like he was brought in as a Priefer guy and is in over his head on D.
 
I just watched the highlights. Burrow is good. Nobody can run on us. Coach got his first win, and that is the same amount of wins Hue had in 30 games.
plenty to work on, and that’s no surprise. We had no preseason and new coaching. Plenty to be excited about as well.
we should beat Washington. We should beat most ground attack teams. Excited that we actually won a game and really we need to go 2-1 here, off the short week, plenty of time to prep, against a very beatable team.
 
natedagg said:
I just watched the highlights. Burrow is good. Nobody can run on us. Coach got his first win, and that is the same amount of wins Hue had in 30 games.
plenty to work on, and that’s no surprise. We had no preseason and new coaching. Plenty to be excited about as well.
we should beat Washington. We should beat most ground attack teams. Excited that we actually won a game and really we need to go 2-1 here, off the short week, plenty of time to prep, against a very beatable team.
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The guy who threw 63 times for only 300 yards against the worst back 7 in the entire league outside of Ward is "good"?

I thought he looked painful last night... dink and dunk and hit one single long pass on the night.
 
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