Browns’ defensive snap counts, stats, and notes: Wildcard playoff – Garrett was OK, but the secondary was abysmal

The play of the likes of Greg Newsome, Martin Emerson, and Ronnie Hickman was too much to overcome.

Below, we analyze the snap counts and stats on defense for the Cleveland Browns’ Wildcard playoff game against the Houston Texans.

• DL: There’s no sugar coating things about what happened against the Texans: the defense, overall, shit the bed. That doesn’t mean that Myles Garrett did. I know that any time the defense struggles and Garrett didn’t have a notable play, it’s easy to say, “He’s invisible, he struggled, etc!” But he’s still only one guy, who was going up against one of the best tackles in the league. He had an average game, grading out to a 72.3 grade by PFF (fourth on the team). A few other defenders like Za’Darius Smith (72.4) graded fair as well. But, as I’ll mention in other positional groups, some players were so abysmal that it didn’t matter. It’s also crazy that Houston only needed 43 offensive snaps on the day. They moved quick and easy all game. Dalvin Tomlinson was a relative disappointment down the stretch and in this playoff game, and I think the club will be right back to evaluating how to fix their defensive tackle situation for the long-term instead of relying on a bunch of short-team patches.
• LB: The only position that didn’t disappoint was linebacker, where Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah was the only guy actually making impact plays. He had four tackles for a loss, and even on one of the Texans’ big pass plays, had a hit on C.J. Stroud. JOK graded out to a 76.9, second-best on defense, only to Sione Takitaki, who graded out to a 79.1.
• CB: Oh, boy — this is the group that really suffered (the secondary). I don’t think the Texans targeted Denzel Ward much, but Greg Newsome (who only played 25 snaps) was abused. He graded out to a 29.4 by PFF, and Martin Emerson graded out to a 39.3. When you look at the technique, how much they were beat, and the tackling effort on some plays, it’s like, “What the #$%@ were these guys going?” Granted, as soon as I saw the Texans doing misdirections (which teams like the Colts, Ravens, Broncos, and Rams killed us with this year), I knew we were in trouble. But these were awful performances by both of them.
• S: At safety, even though Ronnie Hickman only played 14 snaps, he had a team-low grade of 23.1 by PFF. Instead of being the surprising rookie glue that held us together at safety over the past month, he had by far his worst game as a pro, as the Texans targeted him. Also near the bottom of the rankings was backup veteran safety Duron Harmon (28.4).