You cannot start getting ready for next season until you have picked up the pieces from the last one. Just ask Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, who has spent much of his between seasons time trying to figure out what happened to his highly regarded defense that largely disappeared in Cleveland’s season-ending 45-14 Wild Card loss to Houston last year.
That loss came just three games after the Browns rolled to a 36-22 victory over that same Houston team. Both games were played in Houston, so the venue should not have been a factor.
“No excuse for it,” said Schwartz, speaking at the Browns’ organized team activities session at the team’s facility in suburban Cleveland. “There were a couple times in there that even as a play caller, I started pressing. The game started getting away from us a little bit and I started pressing, and a lot of times it just makes it worse.”
Through virtually the whole season the Browns’ defense was rated as the best, or not far off the best, of any defense in the NFL. That made the unit’s collapse in Houston even more baffling.
“It just seemed like the guys played a little bit out of character instead of just doing their job with physical toughness,” Schwartz said. “Hopefully that is a great learning experience for us the next time we are in that situation. I think the message is, when you get in those games it is who can be themselves the best? And I think that was not us.”
