CLEVELAND -- New Cleveland Browns general manager John Dorsey said earlier this week that the previous regime, led by executive vice president Sashi Brown, did not do a good job of bringing in “real players” with their 24 picks in the last two years of the NFL Draft.
And in his weekly press conference, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams alluded to the same thing.
“We have played to the skill set of who we are right now,” Williams said. “I have never played this much zone coverage in my life. You guys can figure out why.”
Despite being 13 games into the 2017 season, Williams feels the team still has trouble getting all 11 players moving as one and fulfilling their assignments.
“I continue to reinforce that,” Williams said. “‘Let’s have 11 guys be right or 11 guys be wrong, but let’s not have 10 guys be right and one guy be wrong.’ When you are fighting some youth, and when you are fighting some other things, guys are all of a sudden playing that haven’t played all year, you go through some of those things in the regular season that you would hope to be able to handle in training camp and OTAs, but that has been a continuing evolution all year long with those guys on that.”
After forcing a turnover from DeShone Kizer in overtime last Sunday, the Green Bay Packers faced a third-and-six from the Cleveland 25-yard line. Quarterback Brett Hundley threw a quick screen pass to the left side of the formation to wide receiver Davante Adams, who secured the catch, spun out of a tackle attempt and outraced the Browns’ secondary into the end zone.
Adams never broke stride, even after scoring the touchdown, ran up the visiting-team tunnel at FirstEnergy Stadium and headed straight to the locker room following the come-from-behind victory for the Packers (7-6).
Adams started the play on the outside of the formation, but ran toward the quarterback after the snap. Then, after catching the pass two yards behind the line of scrimmage, the spin move got Adams away from two tackle attempts and set him on a course for his team-leading eighth touchdown of the season.
“We had to tackle better,” Williams said. “We didn’t tackle a couple in space. Then, all of a sudden, when we wanted to play man-to-man and had three guys miss a tackle in overtime, you don’t want to read my lips. You don’t want to do those kind of things. We don’t want to put that out there to have everybody say, ‘There goes somebody saying bad things again.’ I don’t do it.”
While accepting the fact that he has had to augment his play-calling throughout the season, Williams expressed plenty of frustration with the execution of the assignments.
“Sunday is a player’s day,” Williams said. “You can blame me however you want -- I’m fine with that -- but Sunday is a player’s day. What I do is I don’t want to do anything to distract them. I don’t want to do anything to slow them down. I’m standing over there guessing. They are out there playing.”
