Browns @ Chargers Game Day Thread / Post Game Discussion (Wk 5)

[blueman]

I just watched Skip and Shannon going over this win. What’s up with Skip endless hate on the Chargers. Did they screw him up at some point in time? :shrug:

Hey, it’s a thing, even here at TPB.

[Bolt4Knob]

I just watched Skip and Shannon going over this win. What’s up with Skip endless hate on the Chargers. Did they screw him up at some point in time? :shrug:

Bip Skayless
WWE Character

[Formula 21]

Bad defense = great game

[Parcells]

I just watched Skip and Shannon going over this win. What’s up with Skip endless hate on the Chargers. Did they screw him up at some point in time? :shrug:

Skip is an asshole. Don’t go too far into what he thinks. He wanted the Cowboys to drop Aikman after his rookie year.

[CivilBolt]

Bad defense = great game

This is another way to look at it.

Great offense = great game

Browns have a great rushing attack and passing for us.

[Parcells]

There’s still part of me in disbelief about how that game went down yesterday. Like, if I’d woken up and realized I had dreamt that insane fourth quarter, I’d have thought, “Yeah, that was too crazy to have been real life.”

[CivilBolt]

There’s still part of me in disbelief about how that game went down yesterday. Like, if I’d woken up and realized I had dreamt that insane fourth quarter, I’d have thought, “Yeah, that was too crazy to have been real life.”

And we’re always more often than not on the losing end.

[Rugger05]

Here is a great rundown of yesterdays game.

Brandon Staley is on a different level. Over the past 15 years and especially across the past five years, coaches have gotten much more aggressive and collectively made better decisions on fourth downs. Announcers and media members haven't necessarily caught up -- and coaches are still too conservative on the whole -- but going for it on fourth down isn't controversial in the way it was when the Patriots tried to seal a game over the Colts by going for it on fourth-and-2 in 2009.

No team made more mistakes on fourth down or with its game management over the past decade than the Chargers. Norv Turner, Mike McCoy and Anthony Lynn led the Chargers to week after week of infuriating, inexplicable late-game scenarios, and while the players were also to blame for some of those problems, the team often struggled to get out of its own way.


All of this makes what Staley has done over the first five weeks of his tenure with the Chargers all the more fascinating. Coachspeak about being aggressive and trusting your players is one thing, but as we've seen with coaches such as Joe Judge, they're often terrified of implementing that in practice. Staley has a defensive background, but many of his best players are on offense, so L.A. has been incredibly aggressive in going for it on fourth down. On Sunday, it almost unquestionably won the Chargers an exhilarating shootout against the Browns.

Let's review the fourth downs that Staley's offense faced in the second half and how they helped fuel the Chargers' 14-point comeback. I'll also use the Play Finder tool from Pro Football Reference to try to find how often coaches went for it in similar situations over the past decade, just to contextualize how aggressive Staley was with his offense. You'll see a common trend:

Fourth-and-2 on L.A.'s 24-yard line, 10:34 left in third quarter, trailing 27-13
What coaches usually do: Punt 100% of the time

Staley kept his offense on the field and ran a power play with Austin Ekeler, gaining 9 yards. Teams might go for a fourth-and-2 deep in their own territory in total blowouts or deep into the fourth quarter, but only teams such as the Colts and Ravens would typically consider going for it in this sort of situation. This drive had another fourth down later on.

Fourth-and-7 on Cleveland's 22-yard line, 7:45 left in third quarter, trailing 27-13
What coaches usually do: Kick a field goal 100% of the time

Most coaches are comfortable these days going for it on fourth-and-1, but they're far more conservative than most models suggest they should be once offenses need 3 yards or more to convert. Teams in the third quarter trailing by multiple scores from this range kicked field goals every time, despite the fact that they were trailing by more than a touchdown and about to hand the ball back to the other team after the play. Justin Herbert threw a 12-yard completion to Keenan Allen to extend the drive, then scrambled in for a 9-yard touchdown two plays later, getting the Chargers within one score.

Fourth-and-4 on Los Angeles's 41-yard line, 9:10 left in fourth quarter, trailing 35-28
What coaches usually do: Punt 100% of the time

Down by a score in the fourth quarter, while teams get more aggressive in no-man's-land, they typically don't want to run the risk of handing the opposing team a short field and going down two scores. Of course, punting hands the opposing team the ball and gives it a shot at going up two scores anyway. I didn't include this in the analysis, but with the Browns gashing Staley's defense for most of the day, possessing the football probably meant a lot more in this game than field position.

Here, Herbert scrambled out of the pocket and launched up a low-percentage pass to Mike Williams down the sideline, only for backup Browns corner A.J. Green to commit pass interference. Again, this drive would face another fourth down.
Justin Herbert had four touchdown passes and a rushing score in the comeback win over the Browns. Photo by Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports
Fourth-and-8 on Cleveland's 24-yard line, 7:48 left in fourth quarter, trailing 35-28
What coaches usually do: Kick a field goal 100% of the time (in a small sample)

Down seven points, coaches almost always see this as a scenario in which they need one possession to tie and two possessions to win. When they work with that logic, it's easy to talk themselves into the field goal they'll eventually need anyway, even if they're down a touchdown with eight minutes to go. Teams are more aggressive about going for the touchdown when this is fourth-and-2 or less, but they just don't go for it on fourth-and-this-long with the possibility of getting points on the board.

The Chargers did go for it and converted when Herbert found Allen for a 20-yard gain. Defenses are also prone to committing penalties on these stressful fourth-down tries, and Browns corner Greedy Williams held on the play, which would have also given the Chargers a fresh set of downs. Ekeler scored a touchdown on the next play to tie the game at 35. The Chargers didn't have to face a fourth down the rest of the way.

Those are four fourth-down attempts where I wasn't able to find a single comparable example of another team going for it from a similar down and distance, at a similar time and in a similar game situation. The Chargers went for it all four times, succeeded all four times and turned those fourth downs into touchdowns. Their fourth-down conversions generated 11.6 expected points; that's the most for any team on offense on fourth down in a game this season.

Any coach is going to look like a genius when they go for it on fourth down and succeed, and it remains to be seen whether Staley will continue to go for it if and when his team doesn't have the same level of success on fourth down, but he has said all the right things publicly. Herbert & Co. had to do incredible work on the field to fuel their comeback, but I can't think of a game in which a coach was more aggressive on fourth down and it more directly led to a team's victory than Sunday's win over Cleveland.

The Chargers still have some rough spots. If you thought that was too effusive, let's dial it back a bit, because Staley almost cost his team the game with what happened at the very end. After the Chargers finally came up with a stop and got the ball back at midfield down by a point, they quickly drove inside the red zone. On third-and-2, Ekeler ran for a first down and slid down inbounds at the 3-yard line, forcing the Browns to use their final timeout with 1:38 to go. From here, the Chargers could have simply ran the clock down before kicking a chip-shot field goal to win.

Instead, we got a beautiful farce. The Chargers ran duo and handed the ball to Ekeler, who clearly knew the situation and didn't want to score. The Browns, one of the most analytically inclined teams in the league in their own right, recognized that their most viable way to win was to let him score and get the ball back with as much as time as possible. With Ekeler hemming and hawing at the line, five Browns defenders surrounded Ekeler and pushed him into the end zone for a touchdown. The Chargers then came up short on the ensuing 2-point try, meaning that the Browns could win the game with a touchdown on their upcoming drive.

The better decision was almost assuredly to kneel three times and kick a 23-yard field goal from the hash of Tristan Vizcaino's choosing. Vizcaino had missed two extra points earlier in the game, which would worry me as a coach, but 23-yard field goals are 10 yards closer than extra points. Over the past decade, in the final two minutes of the game, kickers have hit field goals in the 22-24 yard range 45 out of 46 times. We're looking at a success rate north of 95%.

There's no way the Chargers can say that they were going to stop the Browns from scoring a touchdown 95% of the time with 1:30 or so left to go in the game, and that score would have either tied the game (if the Chargers succeeded on their 2-point try) or won it outright (if the Chargers missed). The Chargers have had kickers miss chip shots in the past, but they've also had running backs fumble inside the 2-yard line, too. Forget the numbers. It was clear what the Browns wanted Staley and Ekeler to do, and the Chargers fed into that. As good as Staley was in other situations, this move nearly cost them the game.

The Chargers need a kicker they can trust. Vizcaino has now missed four of his 14 extra point attempts this season. I don't know whether Staley would have kneeled and kicked if he had Justin Tucker to fall back on, but if he chose to try to score because he didn't trust Vizcaino, the franchise needs to rectify that situation immediately. Vizcaino nearly cost the Chargers a chance at overtime by missing an extra point in the fourth quarter, although they came up with a stop to get the ball back.

[Hadl2Alworth]

There’s still part of me in disbelief about how that game went down yesterday. Like, if I’d woken up and realized I had dreamt that insane fourth quarter, I’d have thought, “Yeah, that was too crazy to have been real life.”

You know what yesterday's game reminded me of? I've experienced a few "paranormal" events throughout my life and they have this in common with yesterday's game...They both make you question reality. Really, really question it I mean! You're not supposed to win games where you get utterly dominated by the opponents ground attack. At least in my experience as a fan.

[sonorajim]

Bad defense = great game

Yeah.
Chargers and Browns defenses sucked big time.
OR
Chargers and Browns offenses are Very Good.
Take your pick.

[cmplxgal]

[Parcells]

There’s no denying this is the second time in three weeks we’ve scored a TD when we should have burned clock and kicked the FG.