Jerry Jeudy has had, individually, the best season of his five-year NFL career.
The Browns wide receiver finally achieved the 1,000-yard receiving season that eluded him over his first four seasons. He still has a realistic chance to set the team’s single-season receptions mark, which is currently 89, set twice by Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsome and once by tight end Kellen Winslow II.
There’s something that has eluded Jeudy this season in Cleveland. That would be wins.
“Yeah, I mean first 1,000-yard season,” Jeudy said Tuesday. “Very blessed, but yeah, don’t really matter if you ain’t win no games.”
That’s the reality for Jeudy and the Browns (3-13) as they head into Saturday’s finale at the Baltimore Ravens (11-5). He’s set career highs in targets (132), receptions (84) and receiving yards (1,166), while he’s also on track to avoid missing a game due to injury for the first time since his rookie season in 2020.
And yet, all of those numbers for Jeudy also will come in the worst season from a team perspective that he’s endured in the league. It’s not exactly what he expected when he was traded in March from the Denver Broncos — who never won more than eight games in his four seasons there — to a Browns team coming off an 11-win playoff season.
“Bittersweet, for real,” Jeudy said. “The season ain’t going how … I planned. We will always want to win, always want to be able to go to the playoffs, but unfortunately that’s not been a situation here. But overall, it been a little frustrating not being able to win games how we want to, but I feel like they’re going to be better times ahead for sure.”
This has been the story of Jeudy’s season. It started after a preseason spent as much injured as on the field, then he spent the first seven games struggling to consistently get the football, both because of the presence of Amari Cooper for the first six games and because of the inconsistent play of opening-day starter Deshaun Watson.
That came to a head in the Week 7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, the game in which Watson suffered a season-ending Achilles tear. At one point in the third quarter, while he remained without even a target, the television cameras caught him throwing his helmet toward the bench.
At that point through seven games, Jeudy’s numbers were pedestrian: 21 catches on 42 targets for 266 yards and one touchdown. One quarterback change later, with Jameis Winston taking over for the injured Watson, it all changed, reaching it apex in the wide receiver’s Monday Night Football return to Denver in Week 13 when he caught nine passes for 235 yards and a TD.
Yet, like everything else for Jeudy this season, that sensational performance came with the asterisk of being in a loss. It’s the asterisk which has hung over every great milestone this season, one which he summed up succinctly after last Sunday’s 20-3 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
“I want to win,” Jeudy said.
The loss to Miami — with a third starting quarterback, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, throwing him the ball — was another such example of the gray cloud overshadowing Jeudy’s silver lining. He set career highs for receptions in a game (12), as well as targets (18).
However, after the game, Jeudy couldn’t let go of the “at least three” drops he had in the game. He expressed his own personal frustration at not being able to do more, even with the career-high number of catches, something he didn’t back down from two days later.
“I just think, me personally, I just think it’s the truth,” Jeudy said. “I think there was, like, three balls that I needed to catch. It was big-play moments that would’ve helped my team be in a better position. So, me personally, I feel like that was just what it was and what it is.”