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2019 Cleveland Browns Regular Season

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tristan+kyrie=$ said:
yikes
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It's been that way all preseason.

Either 1) OBJ has a significant injury throughout the preseason that no one has even mention and is going to cause him a lot of problems this year

Or
2) the browns have kept OBJ on the sidelines for the preseason to hide how they are going to use him, and dont want to make it suspicious that all of a sudden as soon as things mattered he is magically healthy.

Your choice.
 
jking948 said:
Actually, this is a great article that explains some of what I am getting at...

www.espn.com

Busting the biggest NFL myths for 2019: Stop looking only at sack totals!

Sacks are the best measure of a pass rush? The read-option is dead? You need to run to set up play-action? We debunk these and eight other myths.
www.espn.com www.espn.com

Again, I think a big problem with analytics is that it cannot consider context. I disagree with its evaluation of the Browns. But these are reasons why they are lower on the Browns than most football watchers.
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As you say, analytics finds patterns in human behavior and in past outcomes.

But sometimes folks be so exceptional they destroy the odds. See the 2016 NBA Finals. See Trump in 2016. SEE JOSE MESA IN GAME 7.

Baker Mayfield shotgunned a beer in 2.5 seconds flat. Which aroused Nate Silver greatly and flustered him. Therefore 538 will be very wrong.
 
Odell is hurt? For real?
 
Presser didn't sound that great to be honest but nothing overly alarming was said as well. He is having a problem with his hip that's preventing him from "opening up and fully sprinting as fast as I can."

It's nothing he's experienced before and medical has yet to be able to diagnose it - "one day it was just feeling weird after practice. it's like I can't feel anything."

Regardless he reiterated that he is playing Sunday.
 
FYI - Packers barely played bass defense last night. They defended 11, 12, and 0 formations with a nickel coverage and bear front. I.e, most snaps they had another corner or safety in for a linebacker, closed running gaps with four big linemen, and didn’t let Bears’ receivers get mismatches.

Two takeaways for the Browns:

1) my guess is that this is how Willks wants our defense to play. We have more talent than Green Bay, so I fully accept us to force Mariotta to play the same way on Sunday.

2) if most teams adopt this strategy - whether it is out of a 43 or 34 base is irrelevant - than all of the sudden teams will need a pass catching tight end and deep receiving core. Teams will need receivers that can get open. It means Higgins, Njoku, and Callaway may be in for big seasons.
 
Jack Brickman said:
Looks like one captain from offense, defense, and special teams. Makes sense from a structural standpoint.
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I get that, just saying usually the kicker and the punter are not both rookies or in the past return men were more important and could be a special teams captain.
 
Lee said:
Are we the first team in the history of the NFL with our long snapper as a captain? lol
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Pontbriand was a captain at some point. It runs in our history.
 
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jking948 said:
I made a thread about this on Twitter, but in case people are curious (just humor me), the analytics models are actually uniformly picking the Browns to finish between 16th-18th in the NFL this year. I want to explain why.

(sorry for hijacking this thread, @Juice Is Loose, loved the Myles article).


1) Uncertainty about the head coach. Kitchens is a new HC, and new HCs tend to be unstable. My guess is that most models have Freddie making a negative impact (a neutral impact would be league average/team's schedule). Even more, I imagine those models have Freddie adding anywhere from half-to-one extra losses.

2) Baker Mayfield is going into his second year. This combines with the fact that his play under Hue was pretty underwhelming. Consequently, models viewed Baker as a league average QB last year, and project slight improvement. Expected points added models have Baker as a +2.5 win QB. Mahomes is a +5 and highest in the NFL.

3) Lots of roster overhaul adds even more instability. The Browns have eight new starters, five new additional rotation players, and unknown philosophies on both sides of the ball.

4) The offensive line is predicted to be significantly below average. Historically, the team only has one elite linemen and two average starters. Robinson is a big question mark and Kush is not that good.

5) The depth at a lot of positions just are not all that great. QB, WR, all offensive line positions, and all defensive line positions will be much worse in case of injury.

6) The Browns were 7-8-1 last season, 5-3 after Hue got fired, and only got one win against a playoff team. They played .500 football all year. The biggest positions they added this year are at receiver and secondary pass rusher - two positions reliant on other factors.

7) Compounding all of this is that the Browns play two games against the Ravens - who are another team with very similar problems - and the Steelers - who are actually a really reliable eight-to-ten win pick. The schedule may look easy, but it is actually pretty unpredictable.

I think this leads to two valuable pieces of information:

First, the best models we have still do not perform greatly at incorporating context. ELO models view the Browns as a slightly below .500 team, with lots of overhaul, whose QB will add about one more win than their total last season. They cannot incorporate how the players feel about Freddie, if they know his offense, how good Baker looked under Freddie, etc.

Second, with all of that said, the models do identify uncertainty with this Browns team. Incorporating new players is difficult, no matter the coach. Injuries are unpredictable and the Browns will be impacted more than most by such events. Overall, if you are risk averse, the Browns probably are not a team you want to root for.

Still, I think the models are underrating the Browns by about thirty total net points (which roughly equates to one win). My guess is the Browns go 9-7 and make the playoffs. If they avoid injuries, though, the sky is the limit.
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I know those weren't your analytics models, but my honest takeway from all this is that those models are hot garbage. Perhaps the reason for that is, as you say, that they're not good at accounting for context. But that just explains why they're hot garbage -- it doesn't actually make them better.
 
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