By Any Means Necessary: Takeaways from the Browns’ 17-14 win over Denver

Cleveland certainly has a weird and, at times, memorable history with Thursday Night Football. Dating back to 2006, the Browns have played 12 games on Thursday night. Honestly, the most shocking part about those 12 games is that the Browns are 7-5, but I digress.

Looking back through the list of games the Browns have played on Thursday, a few stick out. For example, Week 14 of 2009 when the Steelers came to Cleveland and a 1-11 Browns team sacked Roethlisberger eight times in a 13-6 win…or what about four years later when Brandon Weeden came off the bench to beat the Bills 37-24…or even the next year when the Browns went to Cincy and dominated the Bengals to move to 6-3. What a time that was.

In recent years, TNF has also given us the game that introduced the NFL world to Baker Mayfield and the game where Myles Garrett introduced Mason Rudolph’s helmet to his own head.

Point is, when the Browns play on Thursday night, it’s more likely to have a lot of drama than anything else. The 2021 edition was another one that could be filed away in the “weird and memorable” file. With much of the Browns offense either out of the game or nursing injuries, the game was going to be one of those “by any means”-type games that the home team absolutely had to have.

And they went out and got it, doing just enough to beat a subpar Broncos team. It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t need to be…and honestly, I don’t think anyone would have expected it to be. But there’s still plenty that can be taken away from the game, so let’s get into some of what I took away.

• Let’s all raise a toast to D’Earnest Johnson. For a guy that had seen just three carries in 2021 prior to Thursday night, the Browns rushing offense truly didn’t miss a beat without its superstar duo. While I know a lot of that can be credited to a myriad of people, including the offensive line, Bill Callahan, and Stump Mitchell, Johnson still had to go out there and make the plays that were being laid out for him. I’d say the stat line of 22-146-1 certainly shows he did that. Watching him run the ball was nothing like watching Chubb or Hunt run the ball, either. Johnson almost seemed to mix some of Chubb’s one-cut style with Hunt’s more wild style. There were plenty of runs on Thursday night where it looked like Johnson would be held up for a short gain only for him to squeeze through a mass of bodies for positive yards. In fact, the third-year back didn’t have a single attempt where he was tackled for a loss. Whether he stays in Cleveland or not after this season is up in the air (he’ll be a restricted free agent after the season), but his performance on Thursday showed why the Browns have hung onto him for three years even though he’s carried the ball just 62 times. His game against the Broncos has the chance to make him a lot of money come March of 2022.
• Case Keenum was exactly the guy the Browns needed him to be on Thursday night. He didn’t turn the ball over, he didn’t put the offense in bad places, and he led four scoring drives counting the blocked field goal. That was exactly what they needed to beat a Broncos team that was going to struggle to score points regardless of how bad the Browns defense had looked in recent weeks. However, the game also should put to bed any notion that he should be the guy for this offense even when/if Baker Mayfield is healthy again. While he completed 21 of his 33 passes on the night, 17 of those completions came within seven yards of the line of scrimmage, and eight came behind it. With Keenum, the Browns’ offense loses all senses of verticality down the field. Against teams that have a functioning linebacker corps, something the Broncos didn’t on Thursday, this would make it even tougher to execute in the run game that the Browns rely on. At this point, we don’t know how long Keenum is going to be the QB given that Baker has to heal a broken shoulder, but this win shouldn’t spark a quarterback controversy. Not even close.
• I don’t really want to pile on the guy, but I really feel bad for Odell Beckham. I think the dude really wants to play and really wants to prove that he can still be a difference-maker on the field to a degree that he’s trying WAAAY too hard. When he made that pair of catches in the third quarter that helped spark the Browns’ second touchdown drive, each time he got up and was fired up, but I don’t think he was yelling at teammates or coaches that he deserves the ball more. He had the body language of someone that was trying to fire themselves up and prove to themselves that they can still do this. It’s going to be hard for him to get any consistency going forward due to the ever-present nature of his shoulder injury, but I hope he can turn this around. Not only because it would help the Browns, but also because I genuinely just want the guy to do well.\
• Thursday night was a pretty up-and-down night for the defense. On one hand, they were able to get the job done against a bad Broncos offense five times on the night, forcing four 3-&-outs and picking off Teddy Bridgewater in the end zone, but when the Browns defense could have slammed the door on the game, they simply couldn’t get off the field. Twice, they allowed excessively long touchdown drives (13 plays, 79 yards and 17 plays, 80 yards) that kept the game in doubt until the very end. In fact, on those drives alone, the Broncos gained just over 71% of their total yards for the game. Denver was 5-of-6 on third downs and 1-for-1 on fourth down on those possessions. If the Browns defense wants to even sniff the praise they got earlier in the season, they need to be much better than they were in the second half on Thursday. There are far better offenses on the schedule that will rack up a bunch of points if the Browns can’t fix whatever ails them on third down.
• Kevin Stefanski’s decision-making on Thursday night was a noticeable improvement over the last couple of games. Starting with the decision to take the ball after winning the coin toss and carrying through to the decision to go for it on fourth down inside the Broncos five. I think many were shocked by his decision to take the ball to start the game, but in the end, I think he felt that a lead was exactly what not only the team needed, but the entire damn stadium. It was a tough week for the players, coaches, front office, etc., etc., and that carried over to the fan base too. By having the confidence in his offense that they would take his scripted plays and go down and score, he was able to pump a lot of confidence into everyone that wore brown and orange in the stadium, from the field level to the nosebleeds. Despite my Grievance this week regarding his tendency to pass on points to go for it on fourth down, I thought that going for it on 4th & 3 at the Denver 6 was the right call. Down that deep, you either get the first down/touchdown or you pin a bad offense against their own goal post. All in all, a good bounceback game for the head coach.