Can the Cleveland Browns slow down the Kansas City Chiefs offense on Sunday?
Terez Paylor & Charles Robinson preview this Sunday's upcoming divisional round matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Browns. Does the Cleveland defense have what it takes to slow down Patrick Mahomes enough to keep the Browns in the game?
Hear the full conversation on the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast.
Video Transcript
TEREZ PAYLOR: Browns at Chiefs. Chiefs were getting 10. They're the biggest favorite in divisional round weekend. To me, this game is going to come down to one question: can Baker cook? There's going to be a lot of talk in this game, can the Chiefs stop the run? Like, their DVOA against the run is like, 29th. Their defense has been arrested two plus weeks now, OK? And I feel like they're going to take this talk personally. I think the Chiefs are going to sell out to stop the run. What they're going to make Baker Mayfield do is win in the pocket.
And, it's going to help that he has Stefanski back. Because Stefanski's outstanding at drawing up the play action shot plays. But like, they're going to make Baker, who's 6' tall, win in the pocket. And the key to that is stopping the run for them. If they stop the run enough, that'll take away some of the play action shot stuff that they're so good at. And if you make them get into a traditional passing offense in shotgun, where he's got a win in the pocket, Baker Mayfield has to prove he can do it on this stage.
So that's the question. Can he deliver to this group of receivers if the Browns don't get off to a big lead and if they get down? To me, their only path for winning this game is to take the lead early, hope the Chiefs start slow, or make them start slow. And then dominate the game with your offensive line. They don't want to get behind to this team. They don't want to get in traditional passing game with this team. Not yet. Where you at?
CHARLES ROBINSON: I like the Browns story. I think it ends here. And the reason why is that, I think there are limitations to the steps you can take with the personnel you have. And I understand that Denzel Ward, Kevin Johnson are coming back off of COVID, which is great. But I also think that guys go through a lot with COVID, even when they feel like, oh, I didn't have symptoms or this or that. Then later, a month later, I hear, well, man, it did affect me a little bit. Or I did feel this way or I did feel that way.
I don't like that you still have components of the secondary and the safeties that dealt with coming off of COVID. Now you got corners coming off of it. And so, to me, no matter what, this was going to end up being a drag race game. Because I just don't see Cleveland's offense or defense.
The totality of the work they're going to do in this off season, a lot of it's going to be on that defense. And so, I just don't think they're quite there yet as far as being able to stop Kansas City from scoring. If Kansas City scores less than 35 points, it's an accomplishment for the Browns. I know it doesn't sound like an accomplishment. But I'm telling you right now, I think if Kansas City scores less than 35 points, it means the Browns defense actually did do something right, which is insane to think that a team could score, hey, 34 or 31 or whatever, and that was a good day. But I do think that's a good day.
If this is going to be a game where they're going to win this, I feel like Baker is going to be presse4d into having to throw the football. I do not feel like you're going to run for 300 yards against this team. And that's going to be-- now I could be wrong here. And the Browns could--
TEREZ PAYLOR: Listen. We're any given Sunday guys.
CHARLES ROBINSON: One of the greatest football stories ever.
TEREZ PAYLOR: It would be.
