10/29 Opening Drive: Deep Issues Facing Cleveland Browns During 2025 Bye Week
A look at bye week self-scouting and why changes in the Browns organizational direction could prove challenging.
The NFL bye week is an important time for teams to reflect and regroup. Coaches and scouts dedicate countless hours each week preparing for their upcoming opponents. They analyze game film, looking for tendencies and trends that could give them an edge in games. In today’s NFL, analytics offer decision-makers a wealth of data about their opponents, and with the presence of analytics departments, this information is organized based on the preferences of the coaching staff.
The analytics team provides a series of reports to the coaches at the beginning of the game week. Typically, before the season starts, the coaches and their analytics department work together to establish a clear understanding of what information they want to gather about their opponent.
During the bye week, coaching staffs and scouts participate in a “self-scout” process. Instead of preparing for an opponent, the team uses this week to evaluate its own performance. They receive reports from the analytics department detailing everything they have done throughout the season.
The staff conducts intensive film breakdowns of every single play in order to assess their performance and identify any trends or tendencies that opponents could exploit. This is the crucial time to address and correct these issues before moving forward with their schedule.
Why Self-Scout?
Teams should analyze their own game footage as if they were preparing to face an opponent. This practice allows them to recognize their own habits and tendencies, which is essential for effective coaching. Similar to how a coach studies an opponent, a team needs to examine its film closely to ensure that a specific formation, personnel grouping, or motion is not consistently leading to the same play or developing into a trend that opponents could exploit. The coaching staff must be vigilant about not “tipping their pitches.” This involves various layers of analysis to ensure that no discernible patterns have emerged.
Any advantage gained during a week of preparation for the opponent is crucial. The same principle applies to the team’s own processes during the bye week. This could involve refining details such as the direction of a running play or improving situational decision-making. Each week, a team studies its opponent’s game plan, looking for tendencies in situational decision-making, play design, formations, and play calling. If a tendency can be identified, it should be exploited on game day. The self-scouting process allows a team to recognize its own tendencies and, even better, figure out how to use them against future opponents.
The process of self-scouting is used to assess what is working well for the team and what is not. It helps identify the team’s strengths and weaknesses. Is the team performing a specific skill well or poorly? During a game, it can be difficult to determine whether a team’s poor performance is due to their own execution or the opponent’s strong play. A thorough evaluation of game film allows the coaching staff to understand the relationship between execution and outcomes. This analysis helps the team decide if certain plays should be removed from their playbook or if improved execution could lead to better results.
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The Offense
The issues that lay before the Cleveland Browns during the 2025 bye week extend well beyond the usual self-scouting process. As Jake laid out like only he can, the Browns’ coaching staff is failing offensively. They inexplicably have failed to use their own successes and build on them through play sequencing that allows those plays to set up more success, something every good offensive coach across the league does.
It’s hard to imagine a productive self-scouting process when the existing coach and offensive approach have failed to provide a tactical advantage over the opponent with any relevant consistency.
Furthermore, how do you fix things when the quarterback is unable to execute the plays that are their to be had.
Kevin Stefanski
Jimmy Haslam spoke to The Athletic’s Diana Russini before the New England loss and said this about head coach Kevin Stefanski.
“Kevin’s done a really good job with us, and we’ve had some tough breaks…A big trade we made didn’t work out, and you know, we’re all suffering from that. Kevin, I thought, really did a great job of rallying the troops last week at a really critical time. You find out about leaders when things are bad, not when they’re good, and he did a good job last week.”
Despite Stefanski’s 5-20 record since last season, it sounds like Haslam is laying the groundwork for a case to keep Stefanski and likely Berry regardless of the outcome this season.
While I like Kevin, his play-calling and offensive game plan have been uninspired and lacking in creativity. It is a fact that he does not have much to work with in the talent department, but he has still failed to elevate his group to a respectable level of offensive competence.
What about Andrew Berry?
There are endless questions to be answered here, and some of them have to come during this bye week. The trade deadline looms next week, and the Browns should be looking to move players like Wyatt Teller and David Njoku. These are players in the final year of their deal, and Berry should be exploring what he can get back for them before they depart in the offseason.
The Browns are trending towards another embarrassing season. While it feels like change is needed, the organization is in a complicated, challenging position when it comes to implementing meaningful change in the front office. If they want to get rid of Berry, they face endless financial decisions based on the way that Berry does business. He has restructured contracts and pushed money into future void years to maximize spending. The only way they can avoid a catastrophic financial situation is to maintain that business style. So would Haslam proceed with Berry even if he wanted to move on from this regime?
A new regime will evaluate the existing roster differently; they always do. They want their guys. To make changes to this roster, they will face significant financial hurdles. It is why trading Myles Garrett was impossible, without setting their spending power back by years. It would take a special kind of general manager to come in and fix this roster without destroying their ability to spend competitively. It makes me believe even more that Haslam intends to stay the course.
It would be easier for the Browns to move on from Stefanski than from Berry, but Haslam continues to support him in the middle of another all-time bad offensive performance.
Historically, most NFL teams would be making major changes during a bye week like this. However, Andrew Berry is not scheduled to speak this week as he typically does. Meanwhile, the organization is facing a variety of complex issues regarding its direction.
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The only reason to keep either of these guys is to avoid the cycle of turning over the roster. A new Gm and coach come in and they trade good players for pennies because they don't fit their system... Guys like Jordan poyer in the past.. I don't want to get stuck in that cycle again, but I just don't see how we keep Stefanski at the this point. Baring of course a major second half turnaround....
I see no good reason to retain a GM who has failed miserably at roster construction just because he has created such a cap mess, that he is perceived to be the only one who can avoid a cap collapse. He is literally holding the team hostage to his own incompetence. Apparently, Jimmy is ok with that. And maybe Jimmy should task Depo and his analytics department with assessing their track record since they've been here. The search for data points continues.