Thoughts from Preseason Game 1, Cleveland Browns vs. Green Bay Packers

Colt McCoy seemed to have very good communication and timing with all of his receivers.  Too bad Massaquoi won’t be on that same page as Brian Robiskie, Josh Cribbs, Greg Little, and Ben Watson are right now due to his injury.  He has some make-up work to do. You can’t get much better than 9-10 for 135 yards and a TD.

Peyton Hillis didn’t have a whole lot of room to run nor did any Browns back until the last drive of the fourth quarter, when Armond Smith ran 10 times for 41 yards and forced the coaches to take the ball right out of Jarret Brown’s hands.  The offensive line had little push in the run game, but at least it gave McCoy and Wallace ample time in their pass protection to get the ball to his receivers.

The defense looked like it was headed in the right direction, and the front four were better than I had expected.  Unfortunately, the front four were not getting consistent pressure.  Yes, they were getting some, and Jayme Mitchell looked better than anyone except Browns management thought, but not enough to make Aaron Rodgers and Matt Flynn feel uncomfortable in the pocket play in and play out.

I really like Dick Jauron’s defensive strategy, which allowed for more big blitzes Saturday night than we saw through the full Romeo Crennel era.  Yes, there is still some confusion, and no, we didn’t get to see the full young secondary or linebacking corps (Usama Young and Chris Gocong sat out this contest).  

Aaron Rodgers had better numbers against our defense than I’d like to see.  But, the Browns did face the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers first team offense twice and forced them three and out one of those times.  Not too shabby to start for a team that’s been practicing together less than two weeks and was ranked so poorly last year.

In a day or two, I will discuss a couple of players that excited me and a couple that seemed underwhelming in their first preseason game of 2011.