2011 Season Preview: Cleveland Browns

AFC North – Browns
Summary:

The Browns are playing in one of the tougher conferences in the league just by virtue of having to play the Steelers and the Ravens twice. Last year they weren’t a very good PossessionPoints team with an offense that ranked 26th and a defense that ranked 23rd. Last year we had real questions about the Browns QB, this year we are pretty confident Colt McCoy is going to be the number 1 QB. Veteran Seneca Wallace looks to be the backup. McCoy is a wildcard in our view, he shows great potential but the question is will he get to top form this season. We expect some improvement but aren’t going to go wild. We are actually looking for a little bigger improvement on defense.  

With this in mind we raised their offensive performance by a modest 5%. We bumped their defensive performance up 10%. Even that was not good enough to produce many wins on a schedule our numbers rank as 22nd toughest and the classic SOS ranks as 20th toughest in the league. A projection of just three wins may seem overly pessimistic but we had difficulty justifying a much bigger improvement and calling that the expected case.

Room for improvement:

You bet, there is plenty of room for improvement, the question is how much? Well, let’s say Colt McCoy is the real deal and has a breakout season. If we improve their offensive performance by 20% and their defense by another 20%. The result, 10-6, which if the tie breakers fall their way could be enough to get a wildcard. So, despite their being colored “Red” by the expected case of 3-13 the optimistic scenario has them potentially making the playoffs. How likely is this much of an improvement. Not very, teams frequently move by 10-15% but for both units to move by 20% only happens to one or two teams a year.   

How they could falter:

Browns fans, don’t even think it. But if their offensive performance falls off by 5% and their defense remains unchanged from last season then we forecast their record would fall to 1-15.

It could be worse, the projection could have gone to 0 wins but it thankfully it didn’t. So, it looks like the Browns have a base of one win to work up from. This season won’t be easy for the Browns but if things come together right, remember 10-6 is an upside. 

Biggest Question Marks:

Our biggest question this year is the same as it was last year QB? We don’t question who it will be this year but we do question whether he is as good as we think he is. McCoy will still be looking for Mohamed Massaquoi, Brian Robiskie, and Josh Cribbs who may not exactly be the top wide receiver corp in the league, but they are pretty good. Unfortunately we are forecasting another long season in Cleveland, for the sake of Browns fans, we hope we are wrong.