2024 Week 2: Browns 18, Jaguars 13
This was a battle of two terrible and unmotivated teams and the Browns should have crushed the Jaguars. Jacksonville is in a battle with a few teams to be the second worst team in the league, Carolina has the #1 spot locked up with Young playing QB.
Cleveland started the game off with 2 very long dominant drives, the first resulted in a TD, and the second was killed by Amari Cooper dropping a wide open first down, leading to a field goal. The ensuing kickoff the Browns forced and recovered a fumble but it was called back by an illegal formation. A few plays later Trevor throws an INT that the defender couldn’t hold on to through his dive/somersault. This game could have been 21/28 to 0 had things gone their way a little more.
Jacksonville had a chance to win this game despite playing awful football, the Browns offense played with no energy, and if they did this game would not have been close.
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QB Report:
- Trevor Lawrence (14/30 for 220 yards, 2 rushes for 45 yards) is in a race with Bryce Young for the worst quarterback in the Southeast. Young was benched after his Week 2 game so I guess he’s winning, but Trevor isn’t going down without a fight. Somehow Trevor was worse in this game than he was in Week 1.
- Deshaun Watson (22/34 for 186 yards, 5 rushes for 20 yards and 1 TD) can really only hit basic throws and he has no receiver that he relies on, not that that’s an issue, but he’s dinking and dunking down the field.
RB Report:
- There’s a 3-man rotation in Cleveland with Ford-Foreman-Strong. D’Onta Foreman (14-42-0, 1 catch for 9 yards) got the start but every 3-4-5 plays Jerome Ford (7-64-0, 1 catch) would come in, then 3-4-5 plays later Pierre Strong (1 carry for -5 yards) would come in… so on and so forth.
- Foreman had double the amount of rushing attempts as Ford, and I think he might be the slight lead because of this, despite them having a similar amount of snaps.
- Foreman was cut preseason so Cleveland could do some roster maneuvering, was elevated from the practice squad and played exactly 1 snap for the Browns in Week 1. Then out of the blue he comes into this game leading the Browns backfield in touches. This was a concerted effort to get him the ball.
- Travis Etienne’s numbers are getting hurt by Trevor’s inability to throw the ball (13-52-1, 3 catches for 6-0/4). Defenses don’t respect Trevor anymore and are stacking the box.
WR/TE Report:
- Amari Cooper (3-11-0/8) played the worst games of his career, dropping open passes and running lazy routes. I’m not sure if he’s given up because of the Watson situation, if he’s slowed down with age (and he isn’t that old, 30), or if there’s something else going on. He was terrible in this game and might be the worst receiver performance I’ve seen this season. Two drops this game, one drop in Week 1.
- Brian Thomas Jr (2-94-0/4) is the best receiver the Jaguars have, and he is open all the time. Even last week against Ramsey he was finding openings. Trevor Lawrence isn’t relying on Brian Thomas like he should, this should be a Matt Stafford-Megatron kind of relationship where 2 in every 3 pass attempts go to Thomas. Like Bortles to Allen Robinson in their Jaguars days.
- Brenton Strange (3-65-0/6) had more targets than 2024 first round draft pick Brian Thomas.
D/ST Report:
- Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (7 tackles, 2 TFL) played a great game as he always does.
- Jacksonville corner Montaric Brown (11 tackles, 2 TFL) played one of the most impressive cornerback performances I’ve seen this season. Brown locked up all of the Browns receivers without an issue, and was making open-field tackles like he was a hard-hitting Safety. All 11 of his tackles were solo.
