With a game ball in his hand and a smile on his face, Cleveland Browns cornerback Denzel Ward had only one complaint after the team's 27-24 home win against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday.
"I'm going to talk to 'Rudy,'" Ward said with a grin, referring to Browns defensive coordinator Mike Rutenberg. "All these man-to-man plays. I'm tired."
Ward and the Browns' defense had just completed a game in which the unit played man coverage on 73.3% of Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers' dropbacks, the highest rate in a game by any team this season, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
The approach Cleveland's defense took on "Thursday Night Football" was the opposite of the one it had in Week 1, when the Browns were blown out 34-10 on the road by the Jacksonville Jaguars. In that game, the first under Rutenberg as coordinator, Cleveland's defense played a high rate of zone coverage -- 80%, its fourth-highest rate since 2023 -- but struggled as a whole, making mistakes and leaving open voids in coverage as Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw four touchdown passes.
Since that defeat, the Browns (3-1) have returned to their strength of playing man coverage. Cleveland has used man on an NFL-high 50% of opponent dropbacks this season, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. The return to the familiar style of defense has played a big role in the unit's resurgence, as the Browns enter their Week 5 road game against the New York Jets (CBS, 1 p.m. ET) with an opportunity to move to 4-1 for the first time since 2020.
"[Rutenberg has] done a great job, and the staff has done a great job," Browns coach Todd Monken said. "We learned our lesson at Jacksonville; we're not just going to be able to be stagnant and not be aggressive. And that's part of what we do as coaching. ... We look at everything on a daily basis, what we're doing, how we're doing it, we look at it after the game, and schematically, how are we doing it, and what do we need to do to get better."
When the Browns hired Rutenberg, who previously worked as the Atlanta Falcons' defensive pass game coordinator, the appeal was the ability to keep Cleveland's attacking defensive front intact while also incorporating fresh ideas. As the season opened, most changes seemed to be taking place in the secondary. Safety Grant Delpit alluded to an "exotic" scheme that changed its pre- and post-snap looks.
But when the season opened in Jacksonville, a Browns defense that had been one of the best playing aggressive man-to-man coverage under former coordinator Jim Schwartz looked unrecognizable. Jacksonville moved the ball with ease against a defense that struggled to get pressure, missed tackles and allowed too many explosive plays through the air.
After the game, cornerback Tyson Campbell acknowledged Rutenberg's scheme is stylistically the same as last season "in some ways, but we got some more zone concepts that we run as well. So a little bit more diverse." Safety Ronnie Hickman said it felt like the team played more zone than man in the season opener but couldn't pinpoint why.
"It's definitely a little bit of acclimating to it. ... There was a different play style or playcalling compared to last year," Hickman said. "... Most of it came down to just executing the plays that we know we can make as a defense and just playing our style of football that we know how to play."
Both Rutenberg and Monken downplayed the man-zone fixation after Week 1.
"It's all about getting the players in the best position," Rutenberg said. "Sometimes zone turns out to be man. Sometimes man can have zone feels."
"I've gone against the previous Browns regime; they played a good amount of zone ... We're trying to figure out who we are, who we're going to be moving forward," Monken said. "And that's part of the process."
Which means Cleveland is returning to a tried-and-tested formula.
The Browns have not only played more man coverage than any other team; they've excelled at it this season. According to ESPN Research, the Browns ranked 30th in completion percentage when using man coverage in Week 1 and 27th in yards per attempt (12.7). And 57% of Jacksonville's pass attempts versus man coverage went for a first down, which ranked 29th in the league. But in Weeks 2-4, that figure for Browns opponents has dropped to 27%, the second-best mark in the NFL.
"If you're going to play man, you're going to get beat every now and then, and that's just part of it," Monken said. "There are times you're going to force the quarterback to hold the ball, and you have got to live with it. Otherwise, you're going to second-guess every call that you have. Do all the work during the week, shrink the margin for error, and let it rip, and then let the chips fall where they may, and then reassess."
Players and coaches have emphasized how rush and coverage go hand in hand, and as tight of coverage as the secondary has had, Cleveland's pass rush has also rebounded from Week 1, when it generated six pressures, tied for the fewest in the league and fewer than in any game the defense recorded under Schwartz. Even without two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, the Browns now rank fourth in pressures (65) and sixth in pressure rate (40.4%), according to NFL Next Gen Stats. Cleveland's 12 sacks, led by defensive tackle Mason Graham's four, are tied for fifth in the league. Graham, though, is expected to miss time after sustaining an MCL sprain and an ankle sprain against the Steelers.
Rutenberg has been creative in designing Cleveland's pass rush, moving players such as defensive end Jared Verse and linebacker Carson Schwesinger around. Schwesinger has blitzed at a higher rate than in his rookie season (18% in 2026 compared to 15.6% in 2025, per NFL Next Gen Stats). He has also increasingly lined him up as an edge rusher to do so; 23% of Schwesinger's snaps have come at outside linebacker, an increase from 12.3% in 2025.
"When you put speed up in the middle, it throws off the [offensive linemen] on the interior," Verse said. "When you got power rushes on the edge, [it] throws everybody else. And when they get something that they're not used to, I mean, the interior guys don't really do a lot of scout reports on me because I don't rush over them a lot. So when I am over them, it gets them in a stressful situation, and I think that's what we took advantage of."
The Browns, though, are also showing increased comfort in a Rutenberg scheme that might call for zone coverages in certain moments. Cornerback Myles Harden's Week 2 interception of Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield came from a disguised Cover 4 coverage, in which Harden dropped into a zone and read Mayfield's eyes before undercutting a pass.
"We're all figuring each other out and figuring our scheme and everything out," Ward said, "and we've been doing that week by week, and we see man is working, so they're going to do that and call that. So we're all bought in, man. [Rutenberg] still sprinkles a little bit of his own in there. So I'm not going to say it's just all man-to-man. He does a good job of calling the game."