One of Todd Monken's greatest strengths as an offensive mind has fallen short through five games as the Cleveland Browns' head coach.
The architect of punishing and explosive run games at both the college and pro levels, it hasn't translated early on in Cleveland. Those struggles were further evident in Sunday's 17-12 loss to the New York Jets, when the Browns accumulated a season-low 198 yards of offense.
After quarterback Deshaun Watson was sacked a season-high eight times, Monken highlighted issues on the ground as the source of the Browns' continued offensive struggles.
"You're going to put yourself in that position when you can't run the football," Monken said. "We weren't able to run the football [Sunday], and we were behind the sticks the whole day, and we made a few plays, some get back on track and some third downs that gave us a chance, but we were never comfortable calling it or playing, and that's not a recipe for success. Everybody knows that, but we got to be able to run the football to control the game. It starts up front, starts with the way we call it and the way we scheme it."
When Monken took the job as the Browns' coach, he didn't adopt the plethora of blue-chip offensive linemen that he had at Georgia or the dynamic backfield he had with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry with the Baltimore Ravens. However, there was optimism between second-round pick Quinshon Judkins, who led all rookies in rushing in 2025 before a late-season leg injury, the dual-threat capabilities of Watson and a new-look offensive line that included a mix of accomplished veterans and highly touted rookies.
The vision of Cleveland's dominant run game, though, has failed to materialize in the first quarter of the NFL season.
The Browns rank 21st in rushing yards per game (94.2) and 23rd in rushing yards per carry (3.7). A significant portion of that production has come from designed runs and scrambles by Watson, whose 167 rushing yards make up more than one-third of Cleveland's rushing total.
Judkins, who leads the team with 221 rushing yards, is averaging 3 yards per carry this season, 39th out of 41 qualified running backs. The only players averaging fewer yards per rush are the Green Bay Packers' MarShawn Lloyd (2.8) and the Houston Texans' David Montgomery (2.7). Judkins is also averaging 1.14 yards per rush before first contact this season, by far the lowest of the 41 qualified running backs (Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty is second at 1.23).
After 100-yard rushing efforts in back-to-back games in Weeks 3 and 4, Cleveland's running game regressed against the Jets. The Browns totaled 96 yards on the ground, and Watson (40 rushing yards) almost matched Judkins' rushing total (44 yards).
"It's never just one thing," Monken said Monday. "It's scheming. It's us running off the football. It's executing at a much higher level than we are right now. And until we do that, we will struggle. And it really wasn't that way at Pittsburgh [in Week 4]. I felt like we had made some strides, and the Jets have a good front, and we just didn't execute and certainly didn't coach it well enough."
Up front, the Browns' offensive line hasn't been able to open running lanes consistently enough for Judkins and other rushers. The unit ranks 26th in ESPN's run block win rate metric (71.1%), which measures the proportion of plays in which a player "won" his block on designed running plays. Early-down struggles have also contributed to unmanageable third-and-long situations. Cleveland is 25th in yards per rush on first down (3.5), part of the reason that the offense is averaging 9 yards of distance to convert for a first down, the sixth-highest mark in the league.
The Browns are also becoming a predictable offense when it comes to their rushing tendencies. Cleveland has increasingly been operating its offense out of shotgun; 76.2% of its plays come from a shotgun alignment, and 65.7% of its run plays are out of shotgun, both league-high rates. As more NFL teams are returning to under-center plays and taking advantage of its unpredictability in the run game, the Browns have just 30 designed runs with their running backs from under center, by far the fewest in the league. They haven't had much success on those attempts, averaging a league-low 1.9 yards per carry.
"There's a little of everything that goes with it," Monken said of the offensive tendencies. "I mean, certainly we're capable of pivoting what we feel like is best for us moving forward. There's more to it than just that. But we were playing Tampa four weeks ago, we were under center, and they were pressuring us, and then we got in the gun and we had some success, and we were running it and we're throwing it, we're getting the ball out of his hands.
"And each week you're pivoting. You want to have enough in your offense to not be pigeonholed as to one way to be able to move the football. And it's not in stone, it's in sand. And we're going to do what we feel like we need to do, even moving forward. Did we see that coming the other day? No. But that's what you do. You learn from it, you own it, you fight like hell to fix it, and you move on."
Efforts to improve the running game could be dealt with a blow, as Judkins is day-to-day with an ankle injury he sustained against the Jets. Running back Dylan Sampson, who entered the season as Cleveland's No. 2 back, has missed the past four games on injured reserve because of a knee injury. Monken said it is a "possibility" the team will open his practice window this week.
Despite the paltry rushing numbers, left guard Zion Johnson said there have been positive moments to build on.
"In the run game we definitely had certain plays where we're one specific thing away from having the play we want, but it's not all negative," Johnson said. "We looked at it today from a blocking standpoint and from the way our running backs were running, there was a lot of good too and a lot of potential that we can really untap just by being more detailed. But like I said, our goal is fix the Browns hurting Browns, be more detailed and just continue to improve week to week. We know if we continue to do that, we'll be right where we want to be."