By: Jeff Risdon | February 19, 2019 9:05 am ET 2 minutes
The 2018 Cleveland Browns improved in so many facets of playing football, but there were still some dark spots on the resume. The biggest negative, even worse than placekicking or defending the pass against tight ends (though that was wretched too), was the tackling by the Browns defense.
From Briean Boddy-Calhoun whiffing on a potential critical TFL in the late loss to Baltimore, to Joe Schobert getting blasted by Marshawn Lynch in the hole in the loss to the lowly Raiders, to T.J. Carrie forgetting to wrap and allowing a key first down YAC in the early close loss to the Saints, bad tackling cost the Browns in the win column.
Pro Football Focus put some analytical context to the poor tackling. Cleveland graded out dead last among the 32 NFL teams with a score of just 34.8. The next-worst team was San Francisco, a full 9 points higher. Those were the only teams scoring below 50 in the PFF grading metrics.
Even the best players miss tackles here and there, but the rate at which so many Browns defenders failed at such a fundamental task is alarming. It will be interesting to see if new defensive coordinator Steve Wilks places more of a concerted emphasis on proper form and positioning compared to predecessor Gregg Williams, who loved the big hits but didn’t preach wrapping or positional discipline well. brownswire.usatoday.com
Yeah, we shore up 4 things and we'll be a playoff/Super Bowl contender. 1. Score more TD's, you don't have to score 40 points a game, but you do need to outscore your opponents. 2. Tackle better, a big reason why teams converted on third downs and kept drives alive and/or beat our defense for big chunk plays. 3. Cover TE's better, goes along with No.2, TE's burned us for big first downs and sometimes red zone scores. 4. We NEED a good FG Kicker.
There is not one of these things that is really more important than the other, I believe all need to be addressed and correted. Albeit, the tackling issue is bad and not scoring enough TD's is also bad, so I'd list those as slightly more priority but all need fixed.
" Steve Wilks places more of a concerted emphasis on proper form and positioning compared to predecessor Gregg Williams, who loved the big hits but didn’t preach wrapping or positional discipline well. "
This should help and protect Denzel Ward I hope. No more concussions from improper tackling.