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Browns DeskThe Verdict

Browns' 33% success rate earned a 23-22 overtime loss to the Saints

The snaps gave Cleveland a 30% chance against New Orleans, and a failed two-point try in overtime decided it.

Crunch timeThe VerdictDeservedDeserved 30% · Week 9
By Browns Desk, Pigskin NightlyNov 10, 9:01 AM ET2 min read

The verdict

Played like that, the Browns win 30% of the time. The Saints earned the 23-22 win in New Orleans, and the snaps put the gap at three points in their favor.

The score looks like a coin flip. The film says otherwise. Cleveland stayed off schedule most of the day, and the Saints held the better of nearly every measure.

What the score hid

The Browns averaged -0.11 EPA per snap. EPA is expected points added, a measure of how much each play moves the scoreboard compared with an average play from that spot. The Saints came in at -0.07. Neither offense was good, but Cleveland's was worse.

Success rate is where the Browns lost the game. They stayed on schedule on 33% of their snaps, against 44% for New Orleans. An offense that fails two of every three snaps lives in second-and-long and third-and-long, and that is where drives go to die.

Luck did not explain it. The Browns were charged -0.4 luck points and the Saints +0.4, a gap too small to hang a loss on.

The swing play came in overtime. With 1:00 left in the extra period, Cleveland tried a two-point conversion. Sanders's pass to Boston fell incomplete, the attempt failed, and a holding flag on Howard was declined. That one snap moved the Browns' win probability by 47 points.

The calls

Todd Monken made one fourth-down decision that mattered against the model. In the second quarter, on fourth-and-2 from the Saints' 23, he kicked a field goal where the model said go. The model graded it a toss-up and the cost was 0.1 expected points. That is defensible.

His one aggressive call came with 10:39 left in the fourth quarter: fourth-and-2 at the Saints' 42. The model called going for it clear. The Browns were stopped, and the call was still right.

The flags split. Cleveland drew an illegal contact penalty at 7:57 of the fourth quarter that gave the Saints five yards and a 9-point swing in win probability, the heaviest flag of the day. The Saints answered with an offensive holding penalty in overtime, at 6:08, that cost them 10 yards and swung 6 points back to Cleveland. The Browns also got an illegal contact flag on New Orleans in the second quarter, worth 5 points of win probability. Officiating did not decide this one.

The trend

Cleveland is 5-4, and the snaps say 4.2 deserved wins. That is 0.8 wins of luck, the sixth-highest total among the 32 teams. The Browns are 5-2 in one-score games.

Their luck is not all good. They sit at -2.9 luck points on fumble recoveries, offset by +1.7 from opposing kickers. Penalties have cost them too: 82 flags for 563 yards, a net of -40 points of win probability.

Monken's Chicken Index stands at 63%, eighth most timid of 32 teams. The model recommended going for it eight times in 50 graded fourth downs, and Cleveland went three times. Those decisions have cost 4.2 expected points, with one clear miss. The offense's net EPA of -0.034 per snap ranks 22nd.

The Browns host the Houston Texans on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 1:00 PM ET on Fox. The test for the offense is the same as this week: whether it can get above a 33% success rate.

How this was reported. Every number in this piece comes from the play-by-play, drive, injury and snap data Pigskin Nightly collects for every game. EPA (expected points added) is from the open nflverse model. We do not use anonymous sources or invent quotes. Read how we write; spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it in the open.