BEREA, Ohio — Browns assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone, known for his fiery brand of play with the Browns, Patriots and 49ers, had a kick in the pants for the team on Thursday coming off its 33-17 beatdown by the Cowboys and heading into Sunday’s game in Jacksonville.
“Overall, our urgency as a team and our effort needs to be better,” he said Thursday during his weekly availability. “You really don’t know your football team until after, really, the first month of the season. So I think we’re still trying to figure out who we are and make the corrections from this past game, not only in the kicking game, but on offense and defense, and then just try to apply it to this upcoming week. And obviously, a tough opponent at Jacksonville, it’s a hard place to play.”
He acknowledged that people often overreact to Week 1 losses, but he still had some tough talk for the players about what was missing vs. the Cowboys, and what they need to see in Jacksonville.
“We did not play well as a football team at all,” he said. “That’s not our standard. That’s not the head coach’s standard, (Jim) Schwartz, anybody. We hold our team to a high standard, and we know that we have to play a lot better in every phase. I think we need to compete harder; we need to play harder. We need to play with better effort across the board. And a lot cleaner, we had a lot of penalties in the game as a team. You win as a team; you lose as a team. That was definitely a team loss and we have moved on, and we are ready to roll.”
Ventrone specifically chastised his special teams unit for the 60-yard punt return for a touchdown in the third quarter, and pulled no punches.
“Geez, there’s a lot of bad football in that play that,” he said. “We were not obviously up to our standards. Gotta have a better punt with location and hang time. The leverage needs to be better. The effort was poor and it was addressed, and we will move forward and keep coaching it up.”
Browns offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey, also a former NFL player for the Browns and other teams, didn’t think the offense lacked effort. Rather, it was more execution that resulted in only 10 points until the final 29 seconds, a 2-for-15 performance on third down, six sacks allowed and 17 hits, and a 51.1 rating for Deshaun Watson.
“Obviously (effort is) what this game’s about,” he said. “It’s about passion, it’s about physicality, it’s about going out and flying around and playing for each other.
“I’ve got a lot of faith in our guys that they’re going to go out and fly around. I think there was a lot of great effort in this past game. That’s something we’re going to take a lot of pride in. Whether it’s this game moving forward or the entire year, we’re going to go out, we’re going to fly around and we’re going to have no regrets after we step off that field.”
But Amari Cooper was more in the Ventrone camp with the Browns needing more juice.
“We didn’t have the urgency necessary to be a successful offense,” he said. “So hopefully this week we’ll pick it up. We’ve got practice today, we’re going to go out there and practice hard and grind. We’ve got to do a couple things right this week, mainly at the receiver room winning our one-on-one matchups and that’s what we’re looking to do.”
He said increased urgency hasn’t necessarily been a team-wide stated theme this week.
“It’s just something that I’ve seen,” he said. “We’ve got to be ready to play. We’ve got to go out there, and the theme of the offense is go out there and score points every drive, and we didn’t do that. So we need more urgency in that regard.”
The harsh reality for the Browns — and the 0-1 Jaguars — is that teams who start 0-2 only have about a 10% chance of making the playoffs. Since 2007, 140 teams have started 0-2, and only 14 of them have made the playoffs for 10%. Last season, nine teams started 0-2, and only the Texans made it out of that bunch.
But defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz believes that 0-1, at least, can have a silver lining.
“I remember addressing the team one time, I can’t really remember (where), but at one time, teams that started 1-0 had a less chance to make the playoffs than the teams that started 0-1,” he said. “And I couldn’t wrap my arms around why that was. And the best I could come up with is the teams that were 0-1 had to confront their problems, right? They were embarrassed by the performance. It’s a big game and you have to go out and it’s an immediate self-check.
“You get slapped and, ‘hey, we gotta go’. The urgency to get it right. And maybe there’s a tendency if you start 1-0 maybe you, maybe you dismiss or ignore some of those same problems just because of the result of the game. We have a really proud group on offense and defense and they’re anxious to put that week behind and come up with a win on the road.”
Schwartz was asked where he unearthed the 1-0 stat, and laughingly said maybe he made it up.
“But I think if we do our job as players and as coaches and you guys write the story of the 2024 Browns and if this is a successful season for us, I hope that we can all look back and say, ‘You know what? They lost that opener but in the long run, that was a good thing for this team.’”
True or not, the Browns know they need to kick it into high gear in Jacksonville or face a slim chance of making the playoffs in what they hope will be a Super Bowl season.
