Cleveland Browns: Running back preview, projection

Whatever star power the Cleveland Browns may lack at running back, they might have one of the best duos in the NFL and could be poised for a monster year.

The Cleveland Browns running back pairing of Isaiah Crowell and Duke Johnson combined for 2,143 yards and eight touchdowns last year. Those two names won’t change, but changes elsewhere could give them the chance to combine for over 2,500 yards this season, if they stay healthy.

After the first month of the season in 2016, the Browns led the league in both total rushing yards and yards per carry. Crowell had 394 rushing yards, just a hair under 100 yards per game on the ground. Crowell also chipped in 38 receiving yards while Johnson ran for 115 yards and had 158 yards receiving, adding up to a total of 705 total yards in the first four weeks of the year.

A team that played three different quarterbacks, was supposedly awful at center and was accused of having major question marks along the offensive line as a whole with a bunch of rookie receivers managed to average 176.25 yards from just the running backs for four games. Had they kept up that incredible average for the year, they’d have ended up with 2,820 yards combined.

After that first month, Crowell and Johnson’s contributions dropped to just 120 yards per game. There are a number of reasons for that drop and as the 2017 regular season quickly approaches,  the goal is those will no longer be there to slow them down.

The first of which is simply Hue Jackson. Jackson has been using the offseason to fall on his proverbial sword for not running the ball more. And in some respects, that’s well earned. There were a number of games where the Browns went to an impotent passing game when the running game was more effective and reliable.

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The most noticeable of these was the second game against the Cincinnati Bengals, where the Browns averaged 2.7 yards per pass and 7.7 yards per run, but threw the ball 28 times against just 22 carries. The game was a crime against play calling.

That is unless Jackson had made the conscious decision that the Browns were going to be terrible and rather than putting a ton of wear and tear on backs for the sake of a lost season. After that first month, Jackson knew the Browns could run the ball and when the season got away, the focus became evaluating the passing game to see who could help them there and who couldn’t.

The second is the offensive line. Despite the fact that even with horrifyingly bad Cam Erving (sarcasm intended), the Browns were extremely effective running up the middle and outside. Beyond that, the Browns went on to lose Joel Bitonio and John Greco for the year. So they then had to press Spencer Drango into duty as a rookie and shuffled various options through at right guard, all of which are no longer with the team.

Now, the Browns have J.C. Tretter and Kevin Zeitler, the latter of which Jackson implicitly trusts. Bitonio being back will be important as well. The group should give Jackson no excuses not to run the ball exactly how he wants, among the highest in the league for every year he’s called plays save last year.

The last reason is Johnson’s importance in the offense. Johnson touched the ball a total of just 126 times in 2016. Part of the reason for that is if Johnson went down with injury, a huge part of their offense went with him. Johnson is the only back the team trusted to block in pass protection. That reality made it so Johnson couldn’t be fully utilized as a ball carrier and a receiving threat as they simply could not lose him to an injury.

The addition of Matthew Dayes was made with the hope to free up Johnson. Certainly, Dayes was able to run the ball for N.C. State, but the Browns drafted him for his ability to both block in pass protection and be a receiving threat. The hope is that they can trust Dayes to step in and pass protect, so that can fully flesh out Johnson’s talents as a play maker.