Browns 2025 Season in Review

Fifty-three sacks. Cleveland's defense got home fifty-three times this year — top three in the league, ninety-fourth percentile — and that's the headline for a team that finished thirty-first in offensive expected points added. We're walking through how the defense smashed, how the quarterback room got muffed, and what Quinshon Judkins and Harold Fannin actually built in a lost year. Five and twelve. No playoffs. Sixth among the AFC's non-playoff teams. The defense gave Cleveland an identity. The offense gave them December.

Start with the team by the numbers, because the split is wild. On defense — and remember, a big negative number is elite — Cleveland's expected points added allowed finished at minus ninety-five point three. Fifth in the league, eighty-eighth percentile. On offense? Minus one hundred ninety-five point five. Thirty-first. Sixth percentile. One of the widest unit-to-unit gaps in football. Third downs tell the same story — thirty-four point five percent, twenty-ninth in the league. And the variance was real: a thirty-one to six smashing of the Dolphins in Week 7, a three to thirty-one no-show against the Bears in Week 15. Boom-or-bust offense, week to week. The defense kept them in games. The offense decided which ones.

Now let's talk about the passing offense, because this is where Cleveland got muffed. Total passing expected points added landed at minus one hundred seventy-five point one on six hundred eleven attempts — minus zero point two nine per dropback, dead last in the league. Add fifty-one sacks allowed on six hundred forty-one dropbacks — an eight percent sack rate — and you've got a passing game that couldn't stay on schedule or push the ball downfield. Shedeur Sanders started eight games and threw for fourteen hundred yards, seven touchdowns, ten interceptions, with a completion percentage three point six points below expectation — meaning he completed three point six percent fewer passes than an average quarterback would have in the same spots. Steady floor of struggle, low ceiling. The unit's leading receiver was a tight end — Harold Fannin caught seventy-two balls for seven hundred thirty-one yards and six scores. When your top target is a rookie tight end, you've got a wide receiver problem.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense, because this one was quietly below average. Cleveland ran for ninety-seven point one yards a game on three point nine a carry — twenty-seventh in the league, nineteenth percentile. Total rushing expected points added landed at minus twenty-two point one on four hundred twenty-three attempts. Not catastrophic. Just not enough to bail out the passing game. Quinshon Judkins carried the load — two hundred thirty carries, eight hundred twenty-seven yards, seven touchdowns, with rush yards over expected of plus sixty-eight point seven. That's a back creating yards his blocking didn't give him. The forty-six yard touchdown against the Dolphins in Week 7 — direct snap, right guard, gone — was the ceiling. The three point six a carry was the floor. Cleveland never found the in-between.

Next up, the pass defense, and this is where Cleveland actually smashed. Fifty-three sacks, third in the league. Passing expected points added allowed came in at minus seventy-one point zero. Eighty-fourth percentile pass defense, eighty-fourth percentile in quarterback hits, eighty-first percentile third-down stop rate. The takeaway number — eighteen total, eleven interceptions, seven fumble recoveries — was the soft spot at twenty-second in the league, but when they took the ball away, they took it in style. Week 1 against the Bengals, Devin Bush picked off Joe Burrow at the goal line and took it ninety-seven yards the other way — a swing of more than twelve expected points on a single snap. That was the identity all year. Get home, get off the field, occasionally take it to the house.

And the run defense matched it. Cleveland allowed one hundred seventeen point five rushing yards a game, but the efficiency number is what matters — minus zero point zero five expected points added allowed per carry, eighty-fourth percentile. A front that didn't get gashed, steady all year — there wasn't a week the run defense was the reason they lost. When the offense gave them anything at all, this group held up. There just weren't enough of those nights.