How Baker Mayfield, Nick Chubb and the Browns have turned back the clock to quietly become an AFC contender

Head coach Kevin Stefanski has done a tremendous job scheming the offense in Cleveland

The Browns are the quietest 8-3 team I can remember, and the fact they've almost silently arrived at eight wins in 11 games is baffling on a few different levels. First off, this is the freaking Browns we're talking about. They haven't been 8-3 since 1994 when Bill Belichick and Nick Saban roamed their sidelines. And their quarterback, Baker Mayfield, has been a lightning rod with the media thus far in his NFL career. They've done it in large part without star wideout Odell Beckham Jr. who was lost for the season with a torn ACL in mid-October, and even at that point, he had just 23 receptions for 319 yards with three scores. 

Lastly, the Browns have gotten to 8-3 about as unconventionally as possible in the modern, analytics-crazed NFL. Cleveland is running the football as much as your uber-macho uncle who perpetually lives in the '90s wants to see the ball run. They don't care, and their opponents haven't been able to stop their ground-and-pound thunder. 

What's helping too -- Mayfield has played more under control than he has in a while. The guy many compared to Brett Favre as a prospect and rookie appears to be comfortable in a game manager role, methodically running Kevin Stefanski's play-action bootleg based scheme each week.

After a 4-2 start with wins over the Bengals, Cowboys, Washington Football Team, and Colts, sandwiched between two humiliating defeats to the Ravens and Steelers, Mayfield has settled into his new duties rather well. The weather in most of the outings has factored in to Cleveland's more "classic" offensive approach, but it's mostly worked. 

Since Week 7 -- following the 38-7 loss to the Steelers -- Mayfield is 26 of 37 for 439 yards with two touchdowns and no picks off play action. That gaudy 11.9 yards-per-attempt rate is the second-highest in the NFL while using play action in that time frame. And while the long-held thought that the quality of a team's rushing attack changes the effectiveness of play action has been debunked by Football Outsiders, we do know that play-action passing is almost always more efficient than non-play-action passing. And Stefanski has used play action 38% of the time over the Browns past five outings, the second-highest percentage in the league among qualifiers (essentially just removing Taysom Hill and the injured Kyle Allen).

But enough about throwing the ball. The Browns want to ground it and pound it. And they've done that with amazing output this season, as they're leading the league with 161.4 rushing yards per game. Only last year's Lamar Jackson led Ravens, and the 2016 Bills -- when Rex Ryan said "ground and pound" in basically every press conference -- finished a season with more team rushing yards per contest over the past five seasons. 

And, since Nick Chubb's return in Week 10, he's averaging 6.62 yards per rush. Since that return -- this is going to blow your mind -- Chubb's yards-per-carry average is actually higher than Mayfield's yards-per-drop back average (6.38). That dynamic almost never, ever happens in the NFL.

Stefanski has also done a marvelous job simplifying reads while lessening pressure on his quarterback. Mayfield has the second-most designed roll outs (50) in the league and trails Jared Goff by six attempts. Goff's slight lead is noteworthy because he led the in designed rollouts by 24 attempts in 2019. On those rolls left or right, Mayfield is averaging a hefty 11.1 yards per attempt on the season. He's only been pressured on 10 of those 50 drop backs too. 

The Browns haven't been very flashy, but they're playing like the 1994 version of themselves, which is a damn good thing for football in Cleveland.

(All stats courtesy of TruMedia unless otherwise noted)