My "bad" takeaways (some of these are nitty):
1. Run defense. Gotta get it cleaned up. Made all these investments in Dline and linebackers, and this was my fear. One game sample, but for about the first 20 minutes of this game, I was waiting for Ravens/Browns in Baltimore 2.0 to happen, where Chubb gets to the edge and starts breaking off 20 yard runs at will.
Not always going to be able to blow teams out by early 2nd half and have them abandon the run. Gotta play solid for 60 minutes on that end.
2. I want to see Ken's defensive notes, but our defense looked very "vanilla" to me. Maybe by design, and I try not to read too much into the 2nd half when the game is already decided, but I didn't see many exotic blitzes (or even a lot of blitzes for that matter), and its pretty clear that against a good Oline (like Cleveland has), we're not getting pressure with the same 4-5 man rushes.
Again, maybe a combination of wanting to stop the run and knowing Baker can't beat us, but just seemed to be very vanilla yesterday. Will be interested to see what we do against teams like Houston and KC, who have QBs that will shred us with that level of protection.
3. Tackling and angles taken in pursuit, especially in the run game, were poor. Likely a product of lack of preseason and live game action.
4. Interior Oline didn't play well.
5. I don't know that Lamar threw one un-pressured pass out of the pocket once Stanley went down. That's a problem.
6. Ball security was sloppy on both sides. Think we had, what, 3 fumbles (I recall at least two).
I think a lot of these things are correctable and may be a product of lack of preseason reps. Just some mistakes that would be amplified against a better team.