Patriots vs. Browns: 5 questions with Dawg Pound Daily

Hue Jackson and the Browns host the Patriots in Week 5. Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Happy Friday, New England Patriots fans. Sit back and listen in our conversation with Dawg Pound Daily editor Thomas Moore on this Friday morning.

If you want to hear my responses to Thomas’ questions this week, click this link.

Musket Fire: Name one player on the Patriots not named Tom Brady or Rob Gronkowski who you wish was on the Browns.

Dawg Pound Daily: The Kent State alumnus in me wants to say Julian Edelman, but I would have to go with cornerback Malcolm Butler. The Browns have struggled at that position in recent years with Joe Haden battling injuries and the opposite corner manned by players that their former teams no longer wanted in Tramon Williams and Jamar Taylor.

Musket Fire: The Browns have had their fair share of bad luck this season, and they were close against the Ravens and Dolphins. Is their 0-4 record an accurate representation of the team’s caliber?

Thomas: The Browns might be the “best 0-4 team” you will find right now. With a break (and not the kind suffered by quarterbacks Robert Griffin III and Josh McCown) here and there, they could easily be sitting at 2-2.

But this is a team with more than half its roster made up of players in their first or second year in the league, and they have had numerous injuries, and they have played three of their first four games on the road, so the record is really not a surprise. This team fights hard, though, and while they haven’t won yet, they haven’t really been a baggy-pants farce on the field either.

With a team that is so young, and with the latest rebuilding project in the very early stages, this is a case of a team that has to learn how not to lose before it can learn how to win.

The Browns on the bench. Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Musket Fire: Isaiah Crowell is the NFL’s second-leading rusher. Are the Browns going to pound him against a Patriots’ run defense that struggled with LeSean McCoy last week?

Dawg Pound Daily: Should they? Of course. Will they? Well, that’s another question.

Head coach Hue Jackson came to town with a reputation of a coach that likes to run the ball and the Browns have had success the past two weeks on the ground. But the play calling has still tilted too far toward the pass.

Cody Kessler has 73 pass attempts in his two starts, and while some of that has been dictated by the game situation, that is probably too many pass attempts from a rookie quarterback that was not supposed to play at all this season.

The key, as it always is, will be if the Browns can somehow get a lead they can then turn the offense over to the running game — as long as Jackson is on board with that plan.

Rob Gronkowski (87) of the Patriots. Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

Musket Fire: How are the Browns going to approach guarding Rob Gronkowski and Martellus Bennett in this game? Gronk is expected to see more action as a receiver after being underutilized through the first month of the season, and Bennett has been hot all year.

Dawg Pound Daily: Absolutely no idea.

Washington’s Jordan Reed burned the defense last week for nine receptions and a pair of touchdowns. Through the season’s first four games, the Browns have allowed 27 catches for 271 yards to opposing tight ends.

No matter what they do, and no matter who is calling the shots on defense, this team simply cannot deal with opposing tight ends for some reason. Having to deal with one tight end is a problem, what they are going to do if they have to defend two of them is hard to imagine. If you have Gronkowski or Bennett in a fantasy league, this is probably a week that you should definitely have them in the lineup.

Musket Fire: Alright, final score prediction time. Who’s going to win this game and why?

Dawg Pound Daily: The Patriots were (most-likely) not going to finish the season 16-0 and the Browns (most-likely) are not going to finish at 0-16.

Of course the Bills had to go and ruin everything last week by beating on the Patriots, who certainly don’t want to lose two in a row and especially don’t want that second loss to come against the Browns.

Cleveland should be fired up to finally have another home game and will definitely put up a good fight. But with two weeks of game film on Kessler available and with Tom Brady coming back, it’s hard to see the Browns getting anything done on offense or slowing down the Patriots enough on defense to make a difference.

New England 31, Cleveland 10