Browns look to learn from final two games to avoid playoff-less 2023
Jack Conklin was there two years ago when the Browns did put it together to make the playoffs. The veteran right tackle has seen other playoff appearances before as well during his time with the Tennessee Titans.
There will be no playoffs in the Browns’ future this season, something assured by Saturday’s loss to the New Orleans Saints. The only certainty in their future is games next Sunday at the Washington Commanders and the following week at the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“You know, I mean it’s extremely frustrating,” Conklin said on on a Zoom call Monday. “We played this game to go to the playoffs and win Super Bowl, and not having that chance the last two years is frustrating. And I think we really need to take a look at ourselves and figure out what we can do better at and what we’re good at and move forward with those things and really just come together as a team, be able to have our full team together.
“This next offseason is going to be huge, really, but the most important thing is these next two games. We can’t go into the dumps and leave these out here. I mean, these are two games where we can get better as a team and figure out how to be a better team.”
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Some 45 hours after the Browns were officially eliminated from the playoff picture at 6-9, the disappointment remains acute for the players. Even when their season seemed to be careening away from them in the midst of a four-game October losing streak, to back-to-back losses to Miami and Buffalo, they kept insisting that as long as there was a chance, there was hope.
That hope is gone now. All that’s left is, really to look in the mirror and figure out why that hope was gone before Christmas.
After the game, cornerback Greg Newsome II talked about the need for self-reflection. Specifically, he spoke of a secondary which “didn’t come to play right away” to start the season, something that showed itself in the defining loss of the season, the Week 2 meltdown against the New York Jets.
“Yeah, I think that time will come for where we could really reflect and look back at the entire season,” cornerback Denzel Ward said Monday. “But last, I think we got two, for sure, two games left and I think our focus going to be on this next week and trying to find a way to finish strong.”
There is a tangible reason why the next two games should factor into what next season could look like for the Browns. The most obvious of those is at quarterback, where Deshaun Watson will have two more chances to put together four quarters of game reps with a team he had none with prior to December.
That was always going to be what December and early January were going to be for with the Browns once Watson’s 11-game suspension was announced in August. That’s not to say they didn’t want those games not to mean something for the playoffs as well, but once they started 4-7, the reality of the situation certainly wasn’t lost on anyone in the team facility, either.