A monumental win over the Carolina Panthers in Week 1 has the Cleveland Browns positioned to be top dogs in the AFC this season. Due in no small part to the play of their defense, the Browns have become a dominant force on the gridiron, and defensive coordinator Joe Woods had a lot to say on Thursday about his unit’s success in their opening game.
Speaking to reporters at Cleveland’s press conference, Woods said that despite the defense’s concession of a few big plays that kept Carolina in the mix near the end, he was satisfied with their performance, and is looking to build on the early-season progress.
“That is life in the NFL,” He explained of the chunk plays. “It is two or three plays, and it always seems like the game goes down to the last series. You have to play really well and error free just to give yourself a chance. I was happy the way we started. I thought everything with [our] game plan went really well, but after that, the plays with the bad substitution on my part and the end of the second half, there were just two or three plays we didn’t execute well on and we got in that type of game.”
Though it might not have been a perfectly executed game in all four quarters, the Browns defense did more than enough to get the job done. Against the high-octane offenses of the modern NFL, sometimes the best a coordinator can do is hope to limit the damage and just keep the score reasonably low.
Nevertheless, Cleveland is primed to lean on their defense for more wins as the season moves along. If they can keep improving week by week and build on the momentum gained in their first tilt, the Browns will prove to be a tough out in time for the playoffs in January.
