Entering the 2023 season, the Cleveland Browns offensive line was considered to be one of the team’s greatest strengths. The unit was rated No. 2 in the league by Pro Football Focus. This put them just behind the NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles.
Four games into the season, things just haven’t worked out as expected.
This is partly due to the loss of all-world RB Nick Chubb. The offense and the Browns’ offensive line was built around running with Chubb. Losing Chubb and redesigning the offense overnight around QB Deshaun Watson and RB Jerome Ford’s abilities is a big enough wrench for any team.
But now the team gets a bit of a breather with a bye week. The Browns’ offensive line hasn’t been a strength, and much of its issues come from perhaps its most important position.
Jed Wills Has Become a Liability for the Browns’ Offensive Line
In 2020, the Cleveland Browns took OT Jed Wills Jr with the 10th overall pick in the draft. The hope was that Wills would eventually become the worthy successor to recently inducted NFL Hall of Famer Joe Thomas.
Wills was known as a great blindside blocker for Alabama. But there’s a catch to that assessment: He blocked for QB Tua Tagovailoa, who is left-handed. That means that Wills played right tackle and excelled there, prompting the Browns to think he was worthy of such a high draft pick.
Unfortunately, Wills might be a better right tackle than a blindside blocker. Now in his fourth season, Wills has opened the season with his worst career pass-blocking rating. His 53.8 rating puts him at No. 56 among offensive tackles in the league, out of 71. This ranking is – by far – his worst since his rookie year.
The Browns picked up his fifth-year option in May. But Wills isn’t playing like a guy about to enter his contract year. He’s slow off the snap. He looks confused in space. He’s allowed two sacks and 18 hurries in four games. Those kinds of numbers are inexcusable for a blindside blocker of a mobile quarterback like Watson.
The Browns Offensive Line Has An Internal Replacement
Great left tackles are few and far between. That’s why the top LTs in the NFL draw an average of $22.5M a year these days. With $65 million headed to Watson next season, that’s not a price tag the Cleveland Browns could’ve paid this offseason.
But that doesn’t mean that the Browns don’t have the right man for the job already suiting up for them on Sundays.
Left Guard Joel Bitonio can slide a few steps to the left and take over for Jed Wills. Though Bitonio has played most of his career at guard, he has played tackle before. Bitonio filled in at left tackle for two games in 2021 when the team was decimated by COVID. He graded out 92.5 and 89.3 in pass blocking for those games.
The team was effusive with praise following the Blindside Bitonio experiment, with Chubb putting it like this to the Akron Beacon Journal: “He’s special. I didn’t even notice a difference.”
Note: This was during Jed Wills’ highest-graded season to date.
Completing the Shuffle
Moving Bitonio solves one problem for the Browns offensive line. But, of course, it also creates another: Who fills in at left guard? The Browns have a few options there and, perhaps, can employ a number of them and see what mixture works best.
The first is moving C Nick Harris to the position. Harris was supposed to be the team’s starting center until he went down with an injury last year. This allowed C Ethan Pocic to step in and have his best career year. (It’s also worth noting that Pocic currently ranks No. 23 in the NFL in efficiency among offensive linemen.) Harris played guard in college.
The second is Michael Dunn, a career reserve in the NFL. Dunn has played sparingly this year, taking 12 snaps at tight end as an extra blocker. His time at left guard – last in 2021 – did not net him a good pass-blocking rating, but he did well as a run blocker.
The third is Jed Wills himself. Wills hasn’t played much guard in his career, but NFL draft profiles suggested a possibility. Wills gets beaten consistently to the outside, so perhaps it’s worth experimenting with him on the inside. Many players who didn’t make it at left tackle go on to have solid careers as guards. Notable among them is Oakland Raiders guard Robert Gallery, who was selected No. 2 overall in 2004.
A Necessary Reworking of the Browns Offensive Line
It’s become a trend in the NFL to emphasize mobile quarterbacks. The athletic QBs can extend plays in ways offensive gameplans can not. The downside is that the guys up front have to block a lot longer than they used to.
Deshaun Watson has ranked near the bottom of the league in time-in-pocket among NFL quarterbacks. This is due, in large part, to his added mobility. He spends more time in the backfield scrambling, searching for that open receiver.
In a win-now season like Cleveland, a team with Super Bowl aspirations simply can not afford such low efficiency with its most important blocker. It’s lucky for the Browns offensive line, and Cleveland fans, that they even have a legitimate, in-house option.
Now’s the time to use it.
Main Photo: [David Richard] – USA Today Sports
