Power Ranking The Browns For Week 3
Let's rank the five most important people in the organization as the Browns welcome the Giants to Cleveland.
The Browns narrowly avoided the embarrassment of losing a football game in a place called TrEverBank Stadium, and that, in my humble opinion, should count as two wins. It doesn’t, but 1-1 sure feels a hell of a lot better than 0-2, and the Browns now have a chance to get themselves on a modest win streak with the lowly New York Giants visiting the shores of Lake Erie this Sunday.
As we’ll do every week, let’s Power Rank the five most important people in the Browns organization heading into Week 3. You can find last week’s power rankings right here.
5. Bubba Ventrone
The Browns secured what looked to be their biggest turnover of the young season against the Jaguars when a massive hit on a kickoff jarred the football loose, with Cleveland recovering on the plus side of the field. Unfortunately, once the camera zoomed out on the replay you saw Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins casually waltzing past the 50 yard line, something he’s forbidden to do until the football has landed safely in the hands of the returner. Flag thrown, re-kick.
Sure, teams are still getting used to the new dynamic kickoff, but for the kicker, the things he has to remember seem pretty simple! Either kick it into the designated landing zone or out of the end zone, and don’t cross the 50 yard line until the pigskin has landed. For special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone, it’s not a great look that Hopkins appeared to have no worries about the latter. There should have been a massive emphasis on spelling out the details of the dynamic kickoff all through training camp and preseason. Ventrone’s unit cost the Browns a massive opportunity.
4. JOK’s Guardian Cap
Let’s not mince words: It’s really hard to make the Guardian cap look cool. A player’s head looks so enlarged while wearing it, I’m briefly afraid they’re going to float up off the football field and into the atmosphere. When Jonathan Taylor wore one in preseason, you could see his head from space.
But Browns linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah wore a Guardian cap on Sunday and somehow did not look dumb. In fact, he looked more terrifying? A running back seeing that big ol’ orange dome flying at them off the line of scrimmage is liable to cause night terrors, like it did for Travis Etienne Jr.
“It was smooth. I didn’t feel any of the hits,” JOK said of the Guardian cap postgame. And a JOK that feels invincible is a scary thought.
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