There were a ton of issues that led to the Cleveland Browns going 3-14 last season, most of which were on offense, where they had the lowest-scoring unit in the NFL to go along with a league-worst turnover differential and 66 sacks allowed.
Another issue that hasn’t been discussed much is the fact that the Browns were fifth in the NFL with 119 penalties, though one analyst recently shut down the narrative surrounding the team in that regard.
During a recent episode of “Sports4CLE” for Cleveland.com, Lance Reisland said that while most believe the Browns’ penalties last season were a result of the team lacking discipline, he believes that they don’t practice fast enough to mimic game speed.
“I don’t think the Browns are undisciplined. People say that all the time. When you look at all the penalties, they’re undisciplined. I don’t think that’s the case at all. For me, what it is, is that they don’t practice at a very high speed. They’re very well-organized. They’re very disciplined. But in the NFL, these are grown men running into each other, huge guys who run really fast. For me, because they’re not acclimated in practice, they get off to slow starts,” Reisland said.
Practice speed is controllable, so if this is the case, it will be interesting to find out if head coach Kevin Stefanski will make an adjustment this season.
That said, when looking at the week-by-week breakdown, 60 of those 119 penalties took place in the first seven games of the season, which overlapped with Deshaun Watson starting at quarterback.
The penalty issue subsided as the season went along, and Cleveland committed six or fewer penalties in six of the final 10 games, after all three of its double-digit penalty games came in the first seven.
The hope should be that Reisland is right, because the Browns being undisciplined would be much tougher to fix than the pace of practice.
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