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I generally do a First Thoughts column after each Browns game, hitting on everything from first-quarter formations to postgame finger-pointing. After the Browns finished the 2022 season at 7-10 with a loss last Sunday in Pittsburgh, I took a few days to ponder and put together a Final Thoughts column on where things stand with head coach Kevin Stefanski, franchise quarterback Deshaun Watson and the overall state of the organization heading to another crucial offseason. 

Going back 10 months, the Browns pushed their chips to the middle of the table. Even a defensive coordinator change and the presumed upgrades it will bring can’t keep the biggest chips from getting pushed all the way off the table if the Browns aren’t better — significantly better — in 2023. Here goes…

• The Browns limped to the finish of 2022, but they’re already better positioned for 2023 because 2022 is over. The uncertainty of the layers of the Watson saga hung over everything the team did last spring and summer, and putting a different quarterback at the front of the huddle halfway through training camp and again 11 games into the season is not ideal for chemistry, communication or overall team development — all key areas which were somewhere between shaky and broken for the Browns in the just-completed season. Having covered the Browns for two decades-plus, I know better than to say a “normal” offseason is ahead. But last season I saw a team that had one of the strangest camps/preseasons I can remember come out of it by putting a lot of energy into beating Baker Mayfield in Week 1 and proceeding to crash quickly from there with a barrage of defensive breakdowns and game-management nightmares. Inside the building, nobody expected the 2022 Browns to win the Super Bowl. But nobody also expected the Browns to be 3-7 and sunk by mid-November, two weeks before Watson could return.

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• Watson wasn’t good. There were glimpses of difference-making play and a handful of throws on which his talents were obvious, and the experience he got in six games should serve Watson and Stefanski well. That was always the goal, and because of the circumstances that became the only goal over the final three games. The Browns are all in on Watson, obviously, and if they get elite quarterback play next year and in the years to come, they’ll be AFC contenders. It’s possible. Elite quarterback play can hide a team’s warts. It can give you a chance to win when you don’t have your A-game or when the ball didn’t bounce your way for three quarters. But the Browns leave 2022 knowing they need much better quarterback play and that they need much better play from multiple other groups, too. If they don’t get elite quarterback play, it’s hard to see this team being a contender for anything other than maybe a wildcard spot. Maybe.

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• How do you fairly and honestly evaluate Watson’s six games? How do you evaluate the state of an offense that was still basically scrimmaging and searching for growth scenarios in Week 18? There’s just no precedent for this. Watson didn’t play for 700 days. He got a full offseason, then just short of three weeks in training camp as the No. 1 quarterback. Then he was suspended and away from the team altogether for six weeks, and what we saw in December isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for whatever he was doing with his private quarterback coach. He was allowed to return to work and to meetings for four weeks but not practice, then he got two strange and abbreviated practice weeks before taking over. There was some good. There was plenty of bad. Despite two big-time passes not being caught, that last drive against the Saints was encouraging. The second half in Washington felt like a potential launching point. Then came Pittsburgh in the season finale, and that was pretty bad. This is uncharted territory in terms of what we saw, what the Browns took on and gauging how far Watson and the Browns have to go. We can fairly say they have a ways to go — and if they don’t take a real leap together by the midpoint of next season, well, that record contract says Watson isn’t going anywhere. Maybe he does reach that elite level and the whole operation takes off. I’m willing to ponder several potential scenarios, and I mostly believe in his talents.

• I’m also willing to listen to those who say the folks who run the Browns knew this year would have its bumps, knew they’d need to change defensive coordinators after the season and knew that six games was never going to be enough for Watson to get near the level he’ll eventually need to reach. I’d say a lot of coaching decisions in the last three games point to all that being true. But I also don’t think the new defensive coordinator, whoever it’s going to be, can be expected to instantly fix issues involving personnel acquisition, player development and those gross communication breakdowns that happened in various ways throughout the season. That new defensive coordinator’s job, obviously, will be to clean those things up and try to keep the Browns away from historic meltdowns like the Jets game and practice squad running backs putting games away like what happened in Atlanta. Myles Garrett was unavailable in Atlanta due to an injury he suffered in an auto accident, and that’s one of those things that just happens — and tends to specifically happen in a lost season. But a bunch of kids (all family members of the team ownership group) standing on the sideline behind and next to Stefanski while the Browns were melting in that Jets game, that’s the kind of stuff that just doesn’t happen anywhere else.

• There was always going to be risk involved with punting away a year of having players like Garrett, Nick Chubb, Joel Bitonio and Denzel Ward on board. The Browns paid big for Amari Cooper last March and got a true professional who made them better on Sundays and in the days leading up to the games, too. But Cooper is going to be 29 next season when his salary-cap number rises to $23.8 million. That Chubb is the most recent Pro Bowler drafted by the Browns is a big problem. Good teams find quality pieces in the middle of the draft, and under GM Andrew Berry, the Browns haven’t done that. There have been a few hits, and Donovan Peoples-Jones is the rare sixth-rounder-turned-quality starter. But the Browns have spent big for middling, at best, returns in the free agent market the last three offseasons, and considering all the resources spent, they’re dangerously and disappointingly thin at wide receiver. Getting Cooper for next to nothing and getting anything for Baker Mayfield were nice moves for Berry’s front office. Going forward with so much uncertainty about several other players — starting with Berry’s first two picks, Jedrick Wills Jr. and Grant Delpit — is a problem. If Wills and Delpit are just OK, then so are the Browns. Because outside of cornerback Martin Emerson, lots of players who appear to be just backups (at best) have been drafted in the middle rounds from 2020-22. I’m not going to dismiss kicker Cade York off of two tough months; I think York has the talent to eventually become one of the NFL’s best kickers. But if Stefanski really brings back special teams coach Mike Priefer for another season, I again have to wonder about the state of the operation and if we really can expect the Browns to be much cleaner, sharper and more adaptable on game days than they were in 2022. We can’t blame Joe Woods or the ’22 quarterback shuffle for everything, and there’s plenty of blame to go around for how the Browns have regressed over the last two seasons.

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• Even teams that are fringe playoff contenders have waves of NFL-quality defensive linemen. The Browns have Garrett, who’s not of this planet, and just had Jadeveon Clowney quit the team. The Browns had the league’s worst defensive tackle group. A few young players in the mix are worth further development, and they’ll need them. Of all the position groups for a front office to fail in building, that’s a bad one to pick. Not just on the defensive line but across the roster, it’s time for several players who would fall under the categories of “developmental” or “project” to pan out. This Browns roster isn’t deep enough. It isn’t good enough. The Browns will have chances to trade third-day picks for veteran stopgaps on defense, and with the option of restructuring deals and pushing money ahead the way they have in previous offseasons, the Browns can still add at least a couple marquee players at positions of need if they find the right opportunity to do so. They can absolutely get better on paper. Can they get better at getting everyone on the same page and avoiding the big meltdowns — on and off the field — in 2023? We’ll see. I see an organization that’s pretty good at identifying and attacking its big-picture needs. I don’t see one that’s been even close to good at adapting, developing talent and building depth.

• By all accounts, the Browns were always going to bring Stefanski back and were always going to start this offseason with just one immediate and significant change, the one they made at defensive coordinator. Considering how the last month went, though, it’s fair to wonder if playing against Carson Wentz in Week 17 saved the end of the season from really getting ugly. The Browns’ performances against the Saints and Steelers were dreadful, and the offense only really was good in the second half of that Washington game. It’s not like we needed Clowney to say what he said to know there were different agendas across a disjointed locker room. That this is the second year in a row that prominent players didn’t finish seasons and that key voices in the organization really said little to explain the situations — or defend the team’s handling of said situations — is a major cause for concern. Optics and messaging matter, especially when you’re not winning.

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• It’s not all doom and gloom. Really. As noted at the top, NFL teams can get better with coaching and player deletions — not just big-money additions. You can get better by getting away from a season like 2022 and moving on. No rational person thinks the Browns are real AFC contenders right now, but Watson and Garrett are under contract for four more seasons. The Browns don’t have to be super close right now because the new season doesn’t start until September — and the biggest games are later. Over the last two seasons, the Browns have failed in November and December. To me, the worst loss of 2022 was the one in Miami in November because the Browns were coming off their bye week. They got exposed by a team that was a week away from its bye — and one that still made the playoffs despite having to play three quarterbacks. Outside of linebacker, the Browns stayed healthy by NFL standards in 2022 and still failed to make the playoffs. Garrett and Delpit getting brief suspensions left the impression that much of the locker room was on its own schedule, and defensive line coach Chris Kiffin saying that Clowney chose his own schedule for the Week 7 game in Baltimore without any apparent discipline sounds several alarms. At least to me. In the public realm, the Browns could blame much of their 2021 failure on Mayfield, and by making the Watson trade, they pretty much did. But the 2022 season was a mess on several fronts, and even if you assume the Browns can have a dynamite offseason on the player acquisition front, it’s fair to have major concerns about the Browns’ ability to navigate a season well enough to land in the playoffs next year.

• The 2022 Browns just couldn’t get connected. They couldn’t get the big conversion in the big moment and once they even trotted out their backup quarterback to chuck it deep on fourth-and-1. They lost that Jets game only after missing an extra point, having a running back run out of bounds, having a running back score instead of falling, failing to recover an onside kick and failing to cover about five receivers. It’s too late in this article for a cigarette break now, but that was all-time bad. It was an extreme example, too, but there were too many other times the Browns just couldn’t get the score they needed and then get the stop they needed. Or couldn’t get the field goal to go in after they’d made the stop. Or couldn’t tackle the running back, or catch the pass in the end zone, and this is all stuff you know. The Browns only forced 21 turnovers all season, and 12 of those were in the final six games. There are more players with proven NFL production on this team than there have been at any other time in the team’s new era, and the Watson trade would never have been made if the folks in charge didn’t think this roster already had key players in key places. So, are the Browns a lot closer than their record would indicate? Or have there been some gross misevaluations that, combined with bad discipline, bad bounces and shaky game management, have delivered a product that ended a four-year run of third-place finishes by finishing in fourth? Again, I’ll listen to the case for either one. But the truth is generally in the middle — and so are the Browns.

(Top photo of Kevin Stefanski: Ken Blaze / USA Today)