THE COLD, HARD FACTS ABOUT BAKER AND THE OFFENSE

By STEVE KING

This just in: It gets cold, snowy and windy on the shores of Lake Erie in November,  December and January — and sometimes even in late October.
That means the Browns could face dicey and challenging weather conditions for multiple games at FirstEnergy Stadium each and every season.

So what happened in those kinds of conditions last Sunday in the 16-6 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders is troubling, to say the least.
The defense played poorly, but it has performed that way all year so the weather didn’t seem to be much of a factor for those players. However, for the first time this season against a team not named the Pittsburgh Steelers or Baltimore Ravens, and one not nearly as good as those clubs, the Browns offense, especially quarterback Baker Mayfield and his receivers, were horrible. More specifically, they played like they were cold. Mayfield missed open receivers and the receivers dropped balls that hit them right between the numbers.

Yes, I know that wideout Jarvis Landry has a broken rib, and that the Browns were without three starters for health reasons in running back Nick Chubb, tight end Austin Hooper and guard Wyatt Teller. But that was also the case in Cincinnati the week before and the Browns offense rolled all day long.

And yes, also, I get the fact that the Bengals defense is not very good, but if the truth be told, the Raiders defense isn’t very good, either.
The good Browns teams of the past never had a problem with bad weather, and that includes the quarterbacks and wide receivers. Bernie Kosar and Brian Siple had any number of big games in adverse conditions, and on fields that were not nearly as good as the one the team plays on now.
This current group has to learn to do a whole heckuva lot better in that regard if the Browns are going to get where they want to go not just this season, but for the foreseeable future.