The Washington Redskins defense looked unprepared, shocked, and confused on their opening drive Thursday against the Cleveland Browns. Baker Mayfield and the Browns offense marched on 89 yards on seven plays for a touchdown.
Mayfield was 5-of-6 passing for 77 yards. The Redskins had missed tackles and were out of place, leaving open lanes and space for Mayfield to operate.
It was a bad start, that seems actually worse given the fact the Redskins were informed by the Browns of their no huddle plans for the opening drive.
“We let them know pregame,’’ Browns quarterbacks coach Ryan Lindley said per Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “That was the deal. In preseason, we didn’t necessarily want to go blitzkrieg on and catch them off guard. I don’t know how it went down. I just know we talked about like, ‘Hey, you know, the referees knew; the other team knew; and everybody was on board.’”
Keep in mind the Redskins had three projected Week 1 starters on their first team defense — inside linebackers Shaun Dion Hamilton and Jon Bostic and edge rusher Ryan Anderson.
Preseason brings unwritten rules among teams. Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera admitted he called a timeout to ice Chicago Bears kicker Elliott Fry to give the Bears an deeper look at their potential new kicker.
The Browns opted to give the Redskins heads up, yet the defense still couldn’t stop them.
“The regular season, obviously we’d be ‘let’s catch them off guard and let’s roll. Let’s get them on their heels and knock them down.’ But for us, we want to work it,” Lindley said. “We want to work against a guy who knows what he’s doing and knows what they’re expecting.
“When you’re rolling like that, as long as we execute and we’re in the right spots and we got the quarterback making the right decisions, we shouldn’t be stopped.”
