Ravens vs. Browns: Breaking Down Cleveland's Game Plan

The Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens will meet Sunday for the second time this season. The Ravens have now won 11 straight games against the Browns. In fact, they have never lost to the Browns since John Harbaugh became the head coach and Joe Flacco became the quarterback.

Even with history against them, the Browns need to take care of the football and focus on themselves to conquer their divisional demons.

The game plan from here forward is simple: Don’t beat yourself in the divisional games. The Browns will play three straight within the AFC North. After the Ravens, they have a bye week and then go to Cincinnati which is followed by a visit from Pittsburgh.

This is the most pivotal stretch of football for the Browns this season. It will most likely decide if they have a shot at the playoffs or if December will be filled with draft speculation once again.

This season, the Browns have beaten themselves more often than not. Turnovers, mental errors and not converting in the clutch have landed the Browns a 3-5 record. It is time for all that to change.

Jason Campbell is now the starting quarterback and should take better care of the football than Brandon Weeden did. The team now has confidence they can beat the better teams in the NFL, having battled the Ravens, Lions, Packers and Chiefs deep into the fourth quarter. They also have the confidence they can win within their division, having beaten the Bengals in Week 4.

Most importantly, head coach Rob Chudzinski, offensive coordinator Norv Turner and defensive coordinator Ray Horton know their personnel much better than at the beginning of the season. They know who can succeed in which situations. They know who their go-to guys are.

If the Browns take care of themselves Sunday, they should be able to defeat a team that has haunted their nightmares for the last six seasons.

The Competitive Edge

Quarterback

Joe Flacco spent last season turning doubters into believers, but he has spent most of this season converting them back. The Ravens have lost three of their last four games, and the common theme is that Flacco has looked mediocre to bad in each loss. While he is still the best quarterback in this game, he needs to play much better if the Ravens want to sweep the season series with the Browns.

Edge: Baltimore

Running Back

One of the great mysteries in the NFL is why the Ravens do not give running back Ray Rice more touches each week. He is obviously their best weapon, yet it seems this is a recurring storyline. So far this season he has just 242 yards on the ground and 114 through the air. He is touching the ball just 16 times per game, however. That is what you call wasting talent

Edge: Baltimore

Receivers

Despite the Browns getting torched by wide receivers Marlon Brown and Brandon Stokley in their first meeting, these teams' receiving corps are extremely similar. Baltimore has Torrey Smith and the Browns have Josh Gordon and then each team has a bunch of “other guys.” Which set of “other guys” will step up and make plays Sunday? The Browns have not seen their complementary receivers make an impact in nearly a month.

Edge: Push

Tight End

Jordan Cameron has proven this season that he is not a fluke. He leads the Browns in every receiving category. He has 49 receptions for 596 yards and six touchdowns. His receptions are the highest in the NFL amongst tight ends, and he is second amongst NFL tight ends in yards and fourth in touchdowns.

Edge: Cleveland

Offensive Line

The Browns offensive line has gone from one of the worst in the NFL at the beginning of the season to one of the most solid units in the league. They have given up just six sacks over the past three games against the Kansas City Chiefs (first in sacks), Green Bay Packers (10th in sacks) and Detroit Lions (28th in sacks). If the Browns allowed two sacks per game the entire season, their line would be ranked sixth in the league.

Edge: Cleveland

Defensive Line

The edge in this category goes to the Browns but just slightly. They have 26 sacks compared to the Ravens' 25 and allow 103 yards per game on the ground compared to the Ravens' 104. It doesn’t get much closer than that. The tie breaker here, however, is the depth the Browns boast. Their rotation is amongst the deepest in the NFL.

Edge: Cleveland

Linebackers

Once again these two teams have a very similar cast of characters in this category. While the Browns do not have a linebacker with the gaudy numbers that Terrell Suggs has put up (eight sacks), they have more sacks as a unit. They also have more tackles overall. I would give a slight edge to Baltimore in the coverage category, however.

Edge: Push

Defensive Backs

Cornerbacks Joe Haden and Buster Skrine have blossomed into one of the tougher duos in the NFL. This is not the same secondary unit that allowed Joe Flacco to find receivers Brandon Stokley and Marlon Brown for eight catches for 81 yards and a touchdown in their first meeting.

They have grown into a dominant unit. They do, however, need to start producing some turnovers. They have just one interception between them.

Edge: Cleveland

Special Teams

This category goes to the Ravens because of the uncertainty of the Browns' special-teams situation. Punt returner Travis Benjamin was lost for the season last week and will be replaced by Davone Bess who muffed a punt in a key situation against the Chiefs.

Fozzy Whittaker looks solid as a kick returner but has only been in that role for two weeks. The Browns also signed Armanti Edwards who returned kicks for the Carolina Panthers and played under Chudzinksi when he was there.

Edge: Baltimore

Browns Offense vs. Ravens Defense

As I stated earlier, the key for the Browns is to take care of the football and limit their mental errors. Most of those errors have occurred on the offensive side of the football this season. Can guys like Bess and offensive lineman Joe Thomas keep their heads on straight in the clutch this week? I certainly hope so because they are the vets that this offense is relying on.

Bess, who admitted this week via Ohio.com (video to the right) that he is having the worst season of his career, needs to step up and make plays. The Browns traded for Bess this offseason thinking they were getting one of the best third-down receivers in the league. If he can find some footing this week against Baltimore and give Jason Campbell another weapon, it will be huge.

The Browns will not likely be able to run against the Ravens very well but need to stay patient and feed the running game anyway. They ran the ball just 15 times against Kansas City and need to keep more balance so Campbell is not seeing an all-out blitz on every play.

Browns Defense vs. Ravens Offense

During the second half of Sunday’s game against the Chiefs, we saw a shift in how Ray Horton called his plays. I laid out the change in yesterday’s Cleveland Browns Film Study.

The biggest key for the Browns defense is getting off the field on third downs. They have been terrible this year. To be exact, they are the second worst in the NFL in opponents’ third-down conversion percentage.

Something changed in the second half against the Chiefs, however. Throughout the beginning of the year Horton had become a little predictable with his third-down blitzes and allowed teams to challenge the middle linebacker that he had dropped into coverage. Often this was Craig Robertson and more than often he was beaten.

Horton started calling more exotic blitz packages and disguising coverages better in the second half, and it confused Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith. He can do the same to Joe Flacco.

It does not need to be an all-out blitz on every third down. It just needs to be unpredictable and disguised well before the snap. That is what the Browns improved in the second half last week when they allowed the Chiefs just one third-down conversion.

That is what needs to continue if the Browns defense is going to win them games.

Special Teams

The blows just keep coming to the Browns. When they lost Travis Benjamin last week to an ACL injury, they also lost a luxury most teams do not possess.

Most NFL teams do not have a dominant kick returner who changes the way teams approach their punts or kickoffs. That is exactly what Benjamin was.

Now they will have to rely on Davone Bess, cornerback Joe Haden and recently signed Armanti Edwards to pick up the slack on punts.

Kickoff returns seem to be solved as Fozzy Whittaker has slipped into the role nicely. He is averaging 30 yards per return so far.

Another challenge the Browns will face soon is the weather. How will kicker Billy Cundiff react to kicking in the elements at FirstEnergy Stadium? Weather should not be too much of a factor Sunday when the Browns face the Ravens, but when they come back from the bye week it will be a whole different story.

 

What They’re Saying

“The AFC North, multiple Super Bowl winners, multiple playoff teams, everybody has been in the playoffs. We’ve been the kid brother for a while, and we need to stand up in this division and do the things that we need to do.”

--Browns’ head coach Rob Chudzinksi on needing to win within the division

“Two guys jawing at each other. I had my mouthpiece in, so when I went to say something back to him, it looked as if I projected towards him. I had my mouthpiece in, I was saying something, he was saying something. Obviously that’s what happened. We’ll leave it at that.”

--Ravens running back Ray Rice on his alleged spitting incident with Phil Taylor in Week 2

 

Browns’ Wednesday Injury Report

Did not participate: None

Limited: Defensive lineman Billy Winn (quad) and outside linebacker Quentin Groves (ankle)

The Browns may finally have a full complement of defensive linemen this Sunday when they take on the Baltimore Ravens. The line has not missed a beat with Winn injured and has actually been dominant.

Groves is a key component to the pass rush from the outside. Not only is be a tough nosed rusher but he adds depth behind Barkevious Mingo, Paul Kruger and Jabaal Sheard.

Full Participation: Defensive back Chris Owens (finger), running back Chris Ogbonnaya (ribs), running back Willis McGahee (knee) and outside linebacker Jabbal Sheard (wrist)

None of these injuries should be too troubling as they were all full participants in practice on Wednesday. Both Ogbonnaya and McGahee were on the injury report last week and they both played.

Sheard is a new addition to the injury report, and any injury to him would put the pass rush in the same situation they were in a few weeks ago. They cannot afford more injuries at that position.

 

This Week’s Game Stats and Facts

Cleveland is allowing an NFL-low average of 4.54 yards per play. The Browns are the only team in the league to have not allowed a pass of 40-plus yards this season.

Josh Gordon has registered 585 receiving yards in six games, the second-highest per-game average (97.0) in the NFL.

Dating back to last season, the Ravens defense has produced at least two sacks in 15 straight games.

Baltimore general manager Ozzie Newsome was selected by the Browns with the 23rd overall pick of the 1978 NFL draft and was a Hall of Fame inductee in 1999 after playing with the team from 1978-90.

 

All quotes and observations obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Game stats and facts are courtesy of the Browns’ and Ravens’ communications departments.