The Cleveland Browns have their biggest game in years on Sunday at the Pittsburgh Steelers in a battle of 5-2 squads vying for first place in the AFC North. Cleveland has a ton of pressure to finally end this 22-game regular-season losing skid in Pittsburgh and sweep the Steelers for the first time since 1988, but from the sound of it, the locker room doesn’t seem too concerned.
One of the most surprising aspects of the Browns being 5-2 has been the fact that the defense hasn’t missed a beat since trading Myles Garrett in the offseason. Shockingly, the Browns are racking up pressures and sacks at a rate that far exceeds where they were at this point last season, although most of that pressure is coming from other positions aside from edge rusher.
Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot recently wrote about how there’s a big solution sitting out there if the Browns want to solve that little issue in an aggressive way. She cited the fact that Cleveland’s edge rushers have three sacks combined this season, and one way to improve in that aspect would be to go trade for Khalil Mack.
“Last season, the Browns got an NFL record 23.0 sacks from Garrett and 5.5 from Wright, and now they’re at 3.0 from their combined edge defenders near the midpoint of the season. It’s impossible to hide the fact that the Browns aren’t generating much exterior pressure, and it’s the biggest weakness of the team,” Cabot wrote.
Mack has spent the last five years with the Los Angeles Chargers, who have crashed and burned out of the gate this season and are sporting a shocking 0-6 record. There is no coming back from that, and with Mack being 35 years old, it doesn’t benefit him or the Chargers to keep this marriage going.
He’ll be one of the biggest names on the open market, and the fact that he is on a one-year deal should make the price tag for his services a relatively palatable one. A mid-to-late round pick should be enough to get the Chargers to trade him, but the big question is whether or not the Browns are ready to be this aggressive.
Sunday’s game with the Steelers will go a long way towards letting everyone know if this team is for real or not. If the Browns move to 6-2 and finally exorcise this Pittsburgh demon, it could force GM Andrew Berry’s hand. This is the kind of trade you make only if you’re sure you are ready to contend.
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