Browns Key Takeaways in Week 8 loss to Seattle

Turnovers

This week Cleveland lost a close game to the Seahawks. The running game looked as efficient as ever and after the first quarter, the defense played amazingly. Cleveland was able to fight to a 20-17 lead after trailing all game but at the end, they came up short because of one of many momentum-shifting plays that the offense gave up. P.J. Walker finished today’s game with a lost fumble and 3 interceptions. This is not a recipe for winning football. The Browns need to do a better job of limiting turnovers as they head into the second half of the regular season.

 Standings

As of right now, the Browns, Bengals, and Steelers all hold a record of 4-3 so moving into the second half these divisional matchups are going to be more important than any other game. Baltimore has the highest likelihood to win the division as of right now, but things could shift in any of these teams’ favor.

  QB Fiasco

With the health of Deshaun Watson unknown as of now, his availability is the most important thing to this Browns team. If he is able to play next week against Arizona, he needs to perform similarly to how he did in week 3 against the Titans for us to catch some more momentum and move into the back 9 of the season. If he can’t go next week all should hopefully be good as Arizona is not one of the better teams in the league. However, Pitting P.J. Walker against the Baltimore or Pittsburg defenses is not a game any Browns fan wants to watch as we already watched a backup in DTR struggle against Baltimore in a blowout loss.

 Trade Deadline

Expect Cleveland to be buyers at the trade deadline where we could either try to see them acquire more picks or more importantly some much-needed offensive weapons. We could see them acquire a wide out, a running back, and an offensive line men to really make a late season and playoff push as the window to win is getting smaller. With the Browns not having a first in this year’s draft, it would be hard to imagine them giving up too many picks in any trade scenario so we might be seeing some players on the move. One of the biggest expendable players we have on the roster is WR Donavan Peoples-Jones who is coming off of a good season but just is not performing in the current scheme that’s being run by the team.