After watching Sunday’s conference championship games, I wondered how close the Browns are from playing in the AFC championship game next year. Pretty close. The Eagles are built like the Browns with one exception, quarterback. Their franchise QB is still on a rookie contract. Their front office basically values certain positions the same way the Browns value positions. Philadelphia’s defense line doesn’t have any high-priced players. Their starting defensive line and their cap figures are Brandon Graham ($9.6 million), Fletcher Cox ($4 million), Javon Hargrave ($11.9 million) and Josh Sweat ($6 million). The Eagles big offseason move was trading for WR A.J. Brown. A move that paid dividends all year.
San Fransico runs a similar offense, but they started the game with their third string QB and ended up having to play their fourth string QB. Who knew Josh Johnson was still in the league. They made the playoffs by running the ball and having a dominating defense, especially their defensive line. Kansas City has one of the best quarterbacks in the league. In the offseason they lost one of their best offensive players (Tyreek Hill) and one of their best defensive players (Tyrann Mathieu). The Chiefs put their best pass rusher (Chris Jones) in the position to change the game. As for Cincinnati, they turned into the Cleveland Browns at the end of the game. With eight minutes left and the score tied at 20, they tried two long passes. One was incomplete and the other was intercepted. Run the ball and eat the clock (sound familiar). On their last possession, Burrow is sacked, and they have to punt the ball. Did they try and punt the ball out of bounds? Nope, big return. Then they commit the stupid penalty to put Kansas City in field goal range to win the game (sound familiar).
The Browns need to fix one of the worst run defenses in the league and get QB Deshaun Watson playing like he did in 2019. The class of the AFC North are the Bengals and they’ve struggled to beat the Browns, so a divisional crown is within reach. This is a huge offseason, get it done Andrew Berry. Stay safe and Go Browns.