The Browns converted only 1 of 14 third downs. RB Trent Richardson was seldom on the field on third down. In fact, he never touched the ball on any one of the “money” situations.
“It was kind of a shocker that I wasn’t playing as much as I thought on third down,” Richardson said.
Turner indicated that Richardson’s missed time in camp – which was sold at the time as a precaution to keep him fresh and healthy – left him unprepared or unready to execute everything he needs to do on third downs.
“A lot of it is where we’re at as a group,” Norv Turner said. “We want Trent on the field. There’s some things he’s ready to handle in that third down stuff and our nickel package and some things (Chris Ogbonnaya’s) going to handle that stuff for a while. Trent missed some time obviously in camp and there’s some things we want to use him in there and we’re going to use him when we can.”
Turner's comments indicate this third down workload split may last for a while. He also insisted that the team wanted to get Richardson 20 carries in Week 2. We'll see.
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