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The Official Browns vs Vikings Game 5 Thread

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  • Bills doing the same strategy taking timeouts to preserve time for their offense 

    @sdbacker80 said:

    Bills doing the same strategy taking timeouts to preserve time for their offense 

    With the same results.

  • @berniesuperbowl2 said:

    I completely forgot we had an ignore feature. 

    Now I'll never have to read another post with tia's "expert" breakdown analysis and gamefilm study. Yay me!

    image.png.36660b782d2d0ebd2ada0669857d309a.png

    Let's not all go down the oft used "cal"road here. Makes no sense. Just say you don't like the responses and leave it there. Or give an alternative and let it live on its own merit. Even cal has some of those occasionally. 

    @texasag1969 said:

    Let's not all go down the oft used "cal"road here. Makes no sense. Just say you don't like the responses and leave it there. Or give an alternative and let it live on its own merit. Even cal has some of those occasionally. 

    I lived in Parma, Ohio and NYC for the first 40 years of my life, so it's not in my DNA to back down. That's why tia is in iggy jail, it's more for sparing the rest of the board from two bighorn sheep butting heads for the next 5 pages and feuding beyond. 

    But I hear you, TexasAg. I come on here to discuss the Browns because I'm not local anymore. I'm not here to argue with fans of my own team, we're all rooting for the Browns. We can disagree, just don't be an a-hole or condescending about it because you *think* you know more is all I'm saying.

  •  Something I was asked and I saw has been talked about here - why didnt Stef open with a bootleg on the last drive to take advantage of a defense crashing hard to run fits? 

     I'll ask a question for anyone follow who wants to give an honest, well-thought response.  

     First.

    - Gabriel airmailed this pass on the previous drives first down, a drive that stalled on this series of downs. Wide open. An incomplete pass that stopped the clock.

    You may have to expand the pic because it isn't full screen size. 

    Screenshot_20251006_130049_NFL.thumb.jpg.412d8ba13a038f729327377b244008a1.jpg

    This is where I'll ask you Browns fans -   

    - youre the head coach, you see your rookie QB playing so tense down the stretch that he's missing easy passes on your previous drives. 

    - your starting RB is averaging as many YPC as your QB has YP completion.

    - you need to burn clock, so another incompletion to start the drive is just handing a free timeout to the Vikings. 

    What are you doing as the HC? 

    This is where I point to the doom loop. 

    - Stefanski calls 1st down bootleg. 

    If it's incomplete it's because he's an idiot that never runs the ball. 

    If it's complete he's a genius. But with the risk your QB is struggling. 

    While im here, worth pointing out.  This was the 1st down run on that last drive.  Something not being talked about his how Teller and the upback lost their heads on what the run call was.  Because Teller is running a pin and pull and the upback is looking at, what appears, to be weakside iso.  

     They ran into each other and gave the 2nd level a free tackle.  Otherwise this is 5-6 yards and likely a 3rd down and VERY short for the conversion + win. 

    Screenshot_20251006_131924_NFL.thumb.jpg.388a3c60ea71b9bb9b68bafb8acd4fbf.jpg

    @tiamat63 said:

    This is where I'll ask you Browns fans -   

    - youre the head coach, you see your rookie QB playing so tense down the stretch that he's missing easy passes on your previous drives. 

    - your starting RB is averaging as many YPC as your QB has YP completion.

    - you need to burn clock, so another incompletion to start the drive is just handing a free timeout to the Vikings. 

    I would roll him out to the left and not the right personally. As I stated earlier with the timeout thing I don't judge based off of outcomes. I judge based of decisions. I personally don't think running into a 9-10 man box was the right decision and I'll stand by that. Obviously there is no way for you to know but if he had called a bootleg and Gabriel missed a throw I would have said well I would have done the same thing and all you can do is put your guys in the best position to make a play. 

  • @tiamat63 said:

    This is where I'll ask you Browns fans -   

    - youre the head coach, you see your rookie QB playing so tense down the stretch that he's missing easy passes on your previous drives. 

    - your starting RB is averaging as many YPC as your QB has YP completion.

    - you need to burn clock, so another incompletion to start the drive is just handing a free timeout to the Vikings. 

    I would roll him out to the left and not the right personally. As I stated earlier with the timeout thing I don't judge based off of outcomes. I judge based of decisions. I personally don't think running into a 9-10 man box was the right decision and I'll stand by that. Obviously there is no way for you to know but if he had called a bootleg and Gabriel missed a throw I would have said well I would have done the same thing and all you can do is put your guys in the best position to make a play. 

    @bjh2130 said:

    I would roll him out to the left and not the right personally. As I stated earlier with the timeout thing I don't judge based off of outcomes. I judge based of decisions. I personally don't think running into a 9-10 man box was the right decision and I'll stand by that. Obviously there is no way for you to know but if he had called a bootleg and Gabriel missed a throw I would have said well I would have done the same thing and all you can do is put your guys in the best position to make a play. 

     That's a fair and decent take, putting your guys in position to make a play. 

     The other half of the contingent has to be acknowledged here - that has been the repeated calls since 2021 that Stef doesnt "run the football enough".  Especially to close out games. 

     I'm 3 drives in on the offense and there is one thing I would like to see improvement on - the RPO structure. 

     Kevin O connell and the Minnesota coaching staff is great at it and it showed creating more throws for the vikes great receiving corps.   I want to see Stef and Rees hit the drawing board hard this week in both creation and timing of deployment (goes without saying, empowering Gabriel to make proper sight adjusts and protection calls) 

  • @sdbacker80 said:

    Bills doing the same strategy taking timeouts to preserve time for their offense 

    With the same results.

    @canton-dawg said:

    With the same results.

    If our defense does its job we get the ball back with a tie game with 40 seconds or so needing a FG to win.  
     

    the alternative you just play for overtime. 
     

  • @tiamat63 said:

    This is where I'll ask you Browns fans -   

    - youre the head coach, you see your rookie QB playing so tense down the stretch that he's missing easy passes on your previous drives. 

    - your starting RB is averaging as many YPC as your QB has YP completion.

    - you need to burn clock, so another incompletion to start the drive is just handing a free timeout to the Vikings. 

    I would roll him out to the left and not the right personally. As I stated earlier with the timeout thing I don't judge based off of outcomes. I judge based of decisions. I personally don't think running into a 9-10 man box was the right decision and I'll stand by that. Obviously there is no way for you to know but if he had called a bootleg and Gabriel missed a throw I would have said well I would have done the same thing and all you can do is put your guys in the best position to make a play. 

    @bjh2130 said:

    I would roll him out to the left and not the right personally. As I stated earlier with the timeout thing I don't judge based off of outcomes. I judge based of decisions. I personally don't think running into a 9-10 man box was the right decision and I'll stand by that. Obviously there is no way for you to know but if he had called a bootleg and Gabriel missed a throw I would have said well I would have done the same thing and all you can do is put your guys in the best position to make a play. 

    Spot on especially with 3 plus minutes left. You burn the Vikings timeouts and they still have 3 minutes to drive annd get into fg range and tie the game up.  I may have a different answer if we play prevent offense with a minute or so left.
     

    the run game was working when Njoku was slipping behind the backers it doesn’t have the same effectiveness when the safeties and backers are camped at the LOS.  

    becomes a question or desire to 

    Possess the ball as long as you can vs burning timeouts 

  • @canton-dawg said:

    With the same results.

    If our defense does its job we get the ball back with a tie game with 40 seconds or so needing a FG to win.  
     

    the alternative you just play for overtime. 
     

    @sdbacker80 said:

    the alternative you just play for overtime.

    Or lose the game. ?

  • @canton-dawg said:

    With the same results.

    If our defense does its job we get the ball back with a tie game with 40 seconds or so needing a FG to win.  
     

    the alternative you just play for overtime. 
     

    @sdbacker80 said:

    If our defense does its job we get the ball back with a tie game with 40 seconds or so needing a FG to win.  
     

    the alternative you just play for overtime. 

    We had the ball with 3 minutes left, 2 failed runs and then throwing a long out route instead of a safer screen or additional run was bad playcalling. It left Vikings with 1 timeout. 
    Probably should have been more aggressive on 1st or second down instead, as previously mentioned.
    After this the Vikings are moving the ball and Stefanski starts burning timeouts. The jet lag must have been hitting hard.

    That was not Ward’s best coverage with no help over top, but it was after bad game management.

  • Being at the game I was pretty shocked at how small Gabriel looked. 

    When he missed he missed really badly, I came away convinced he won’t be anything more than a career back up at best 

  • @sdbacker80 said:

    the alternative you just play for overtime.

    Or lose the game. ?

    @canton-dawg said:

    Or lose the game. ?

    You aren’t the only one.

    But I would prefer to have a legitimate possession at the end of the game in a one score game.  Not a possession with 10 seconds left and you need to drive 80 yards. 

    And I want to possess the ball with a scoring opportunity to end the first half. 

    I support any clock management practice to make that happen.  Taking timeouts, faking injuries, pushing a guy out of bounds, etc.

    Stefanski is not perfect he’s not wrong here though