Cleveland Browns

The Cleveland Browns finished 2025 at five and twelve, dead last in the AFC North, missing the playoffs for the second straight year — and one day after the finale, Kevin Stefanski was fired after six seasons. The arc is brutal and simple: a historic defense dragged a historically inept offense around for seventeen weeks, and the offense still lost them games they had no business losing. There were moments — a Week 7 thirty-one to six demolition of the Dolphins, a Week 12 road win in Vegas, and a Week 18 walk-off field goal in Cincinnati where Myles Garrett got his record-breaking twenty-third sack. Islands in an ocean of three-points-and-punt football. The Browns started thirteen different quarterbacks under Stefanski, including two rookies this year, and rode a stretch of eleven straight games scoring seventeen points or fewer. One of the worst offenses of the decade, paired with one of the best defenses in football. Cleveland got muffed on one side of the ball and smashed on the other, and the scoreboard usually sided with the muffing.

Start with the team-level portrait. The Browns scored sixteen point four points per game, thirty-first in the league, while giving up twenty-two point three — a six-point nightly deficit that tells you almost everything. The offense finished with a total expected points added — the metric measuring how much each snap improved scoring chances — of minus one hundred seventy-five through the air and minus twenty on the ground, putting the passing attack in the third percentile league-wide. The defense posted minus seventy-one expected points added allowed through the air and minus twenty-four against the run, and remember on defense a big negative is elite — both units landed in the eighty-fourth percentile. This wasn't a boom-or-bust offense. It was just a floor. Ten of their seventeen games ended with seventeen points or fewer, including a three-point dud in Chicago in Week 15 and an eight-point showing against the Niners in Week 13. Steady, low, and crushing.

Now let's talk about the passing offense, because this is where the season was lost. Cleveland averaged one hundred eighty-five passing yards a game with sixteen touchdowns against twenty-four giveaways, and absorbed fifty-one sacks behind a battered line. The per-dropback expected points added was minus zero point two nine — bottom-of-the-league stuff, third percentile — and it got worse after Jerome Ford went down in Week 15 and Sanders took the wheel full time, sliding to minus zero point four two per dropback over the final four games. The headline contributor was rookie tight end Harold Fannin Junior: seventy-two catches, seven hundred thirty-one yards, six touchdowns on a twenty-two percent target share — the only consistent positive in the passing tree. The shape was relentless and unchanging: rookie quarterbacks, a thirty-three percent pressure rate, no margin for error.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense, because there's a quiet pulse here. Cleveland ran for ninety-seven yards a game on four point zero a carry — minus zero point zero five expected points added per carry, twenty-fifth percentile, below average but not catastrophic. The story is rookie Quinshon Judkins: two hundred thirty carries, eight hundred twenty-seven yards, seven scores, and plus one hundred forty-eight rush yards over expected — a hundred forty-eight more yards than an average back would have gained on the same carries. After Ford's Week 15 injury opened up volume, the rushing expected points added actually flipped positive — plus two point eight over the final four games at plus zero point zero three per carry. Consistent floor, occasional pop: Judkins' forty-six-yard touchdown run against Miami in Week 7 essentially launched the only blowout win of the year. The red-zone touchdown rate of sixteen percent — thirteenth percentile — has to come up. The runs were there. The finishing wasn't.

Next up, the pass defense, and this is where Cleveland smashed. Fifty-three sacks on the year — ninety-fourth percentile, top three in football — with a twenty-eight percent pressure rate and minus zero point one three expected points added allowed per dropback. The Garrett story is the franchise story: twenty-three sacks, an NFL single-season record, broken in Week 18 on the strip-sack of Burrow that sealed it. Steady all year — opponents were held to one passing touchdown or fewer in seven games, and the third-down stop rate sat in the eighty-first percentile. The one wart is takeaways: sixteen on the season, just thirty-fourth percentile. One giveaway every two games makes it hard to flip field position. Elite rush, elite coverage stop rate, not enough balls on the ground.

And the run defense was every bit as good. Cleveland gave up four point four yards a carry but minus zero point zero five expected points added allowed per rush — eighty-fourth percentile, a mirror image of the pass defense. They faced an average of five defenders in the box on offense and put five in the box on defense, and still funneled runs to the ground at an elite efficiency rate. Variance was minimal — only twice did they give up more than one hundred fifty rushing yards in a game. When Jim Schwartz's group was on the field, Cleveland looked like a playoff team. When they walked off, the score told a different story.