What Should Browns Fans Expect in 2025?
Following a playoff berth in 2023, the team’s second in four seasons, the Cleveland Browns stared down an opportunity a season ago to do what no Browns team has done since the franchise returned to northeast Ohio in 1999: sustain success. Despite exiting the postseason in the wild card round, belief in their ability to finally do so was palpable. Veteran guard Joel Bitonio stated the day following Cleveland’s 45-14 loss to the Texans: "We had 11 wins, we made the playoffs and hopefully that’s our floor now – a playoff team that has a chance to win a division and host a playoff game in the future.” Unfortunately for the Dawg Pound faithful, 11 wins were a far cry from the Browns’ floor.
A three-win 2025 campaign shifted the narrative surrounding the franchise from a gritty, up-and-coming playoff contender to a rebuilding bottom feeder firmly ensconced in its status as a team in purgatory. Such a heel turn in expectations illustrates two starkly separate identities attached to one football team. Though most non-local media outlets forecast another clunker for the Browns in 2025, allow me to offer an optimistic take on the team’s fortune. In 2025, fans should expect the Cleveland Browns to more closely resemble the 2023 playoff squad than the disappointing 2024 iteration of the team.
The story of the 2023 Browns was defense and resilience. A defensive unit that allowed the fewest yards per game in the NFL propelled a stagnant running game, a revolving door of starting quarterbacks, and one of the most injury-plagued rosters in football to 11 wins and a playoff berth. Though Cleveland regressed heavily on this side of the ball last season, their path back to dominance remains clear. A defensive line anchored by 2023 Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, adding two highly-drafted players to its interior in the past two drafts, and seeing Isaiah McGuire undergo a miniature breakout in 2024, finishing as PFF’s 11th highest-graded EDGE rusher in the league. With an abundance of young talent along the defensive front, the unit's ceiling is exceptionally high. So, too, is the floor, with Obgonnia Okoronkwo and Maliek Collins, high-dollar veterans acquired via free agency, available to reinforce Garrett and the youngsters.
The second level of the defense struggled a season ago, allowing the 11th-most rushing yards per game in the league, and will now be without Pro Bowl linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah for the entire 2025 season due to injury. While the news came as a crushing development, brighter times nonetheless appear ahead for the unit. The trio of Jordan Hicks, Devin Bush, and Mohamoud Diabate were overall a pleasant surprise in 2025, particularly late in the season. By adding Jerome Baker by way of free agency and Carson Schwesinger in the second round of the NFL draft, Cleveland transformed linebacker from a weakness into one of their deepest position groups ahead of the 2025 season. With four starting caliber players and a premier draft pick in Schwesinger present in the room, fans should expect the second level to rebound in a big way.
The biggest X-factor of Cleveland’s 2025 defense, and perhaps the entire season, remains the secondary. After allowing the fewest passing yards per game in 2023, they fell out of the top ten in the category last season. Though Denzel Ward continues to dominate, inconsistency mars his running mates, Martin Emerson Jr. and Greg Newsome II. Emerson, in particular, is vital to the unit’s success this season. His breakout 2023 campaign fueled the secondary’s consistent dominance. Likewise, his regression contributed to its fall from grace in 2024. While his campaign in year three rightfully gives many pauses, Emerson possesses exceptional tools for a defensive back and proved that he can leverage them into success throughout his first two seasons. With both he and Newsome entering contract years, I expect them to capitalize on the pressure before them by leveraging their talent and flashes of success into sustained production.
Offensive struggles ultimately defined the Browns’ 2024 season and, justifiably, remain the paramount concern surrounding the team. While Nick Chubb, the longtime locomotive of Cleveland’s offense, will suit up for the Texans this season, the Browns invested heavily at running back this offseason, hoping to ignite a running game that struggled mightily the last two seasons as Chubb grappled with injuries. Notably, Jerome Ford, unsuccessful as a starter in Chubb’s absence, now appears buried on the depth chart behind rookies Quinshon Judkins, drafted in the second round, and Dylan Sampson, drafted in the fourth. Judkins is a power back built to handle a bell-cow role, while Sampson is smaller and faster, offering upside on third-downs. The two complement one another nicely with differing styles of play and offer more talent at the running back position than the team has seen since a knee injury put an untimely impasse on Chubb’s dominance. Though fixing one of the worst offenses in the league cannot happen overnight, the emergence of young talent on the ground would go a long way toward getting the unit back on track.
Running back is not, however, the most newsworthy and headline-grabbing aspect of Cleveland’s offense ahead of this season. As has been the case for nearly thirty years, the Browns are still searching for their answer at quarterback. Whether or not their guy of the future is currently on the roster is unclear, however, with DeShaun Watson seemingly out of the fray, the Browns are in a much better position than they were at this time last year. Namely, the presence of Joe Flacco, whose mystifyingly impressive five-game stretch at the helm of Cleveland’s offense in 2024 helped make a playoff berth possible is back in the brown and orange, ready to pick up where he left off. If the 40-year-old is unable to reignite his success, three young quarterbacks, including two rookies, provide upside swings that can compete for wins in a pinch. With two Pro Bowlers in Jerry Jeudy and David Njoku at their disposal alongside promising young talents including Cedric Tillman and Harold Fannin Jr., the passing game appears poised to return to its back-end-of-2023 form with Flacco at the helm, especially considering all three decorated veterans along the offensive line enter the season with a clean bill of health in Joel Bitonio, Wyatt Teller, and Jack Conklin.
Succinctly put, the talent that willed Cleveland to a playoff berth in 2023 remains in place. Seven players made the Pro Bowl for the Browns that year, and five of those same players will suit back up for the team in 2025. Of the two that will not, one of them, Amari Cooper, was replaced with another Pro Bowler in Jerry Jeudy. The bad taste left behind by a three-win season is sour enough to sink anybody into a panic, though I encourage otherwise. This Browns team is brimming with talent and only continues to add to their stash. Expect Cleveland to right the ship in 2025.
