Watch: Duke Johnson’s first career touchdown
October 4, 2015Yay! Another “winning season,” and selfie “controversies”: While We’re Waiting…
October 5, 2015Only in Cleveland, indeed, except this was on the West Coast in San Diego. The San Diego Chargers missed a game-winning field goal with two seconds left, except that Tramon Williams was offsides. It was the twelfth penalty of the day for the Browns as Williams did his best to one-up Dwayne Rudd. With another shot at the field goal, of course the Chargers nailed it to win, 30-27. Look, man, I do everything I can not to play into these stereotypes, and really they have little more to them other than the Browns aren’t good enough, but it really does kind of fit the Cleveland Browns like a glove that we just can’t seem to lose in the laundry. Oh brother.
Trying to forget about the oh-so-typical end, it wasn’t an awful game by the Browns and I actually enjoyed watching it for the majority of the game. Let’s discuss.
With 2:09 left in the game the Cleveland Browns tied the game at 27 thanks to Gary Barnidge’s heroics. Barnidge made a circus catch that Pettine had to challenge to get upheld at the half yard line. Then Barnidge caught the bullet pass from Josh McCown for the TD as Taylor Gabriel added a catch for the two-point conversion. It was a phenomenal moment for Browns fans, but it was scary because the Chargers had two minutes, two timeouts and Phillip Rivers left in their clip to overcome the Browns tie. In his career Rivers had 24 such game-winning drives. Make that 25.
Penalties were a killer for the Browns. I decided to write this paragraph after the Browns already had 10 flags and before one final flag would cost them the game. No need to belabor the point after that, right? Oh brother (again.) The Browns somehow amassed 10 penalties with almost 7:30 remaining in the fourth quarter. Five of those penalties resulted in free first downs for the Chargers. Amazingly enough, even as the Browns did that, they had the game within one score at the time trailing 27-19 and getting the ball back. Bottom line is the Browns need to be more disciplined.
It’s one thing to get some penalties for holding in the defensive backfield, or block in the back on special teams, but there are others that reek of sloppiness. Alex Mack forgot to snap the ball one time. Jordan Poyer got called for a late hit out of bounds that was egregious. The Browns can’t afford to shoot themselves in the foot anytime, let alone on the road against decent competition with a real live quarterback like Rivers.
The offense was kind of fun to watch. The Browns amassed 432 yards from scrimmage including 100 yards rushing. Duke Johnson made a spectacular catch in the corner of the end zone from 34 yards out. Isaiah Crowell scampered for 32 yards one time. The aforementioned running backs plus Andrew Hawkins and Taylor Gabriel found ways to be open underneath as relief valves and did well in the open field. Gary Barnidge and Travis Benjamin again, made themselves worthy targets. Considering the fact that Brian Hartline was injured pretty early in the game and the Browns again got nothing from Dwayne Bowe, the Browns offense was fun and prolific even, you know, for them.
Phillip Rivers is still an elite quarterback and that could have easily been the difference in the game. Josh McCown had a nice TD toss of his own to Duke Johnson, but Phillip Rivers had two that were nearly indefensible. Rivers hit a beautiful 28-yarder to Keenan Allen over Pierre Desir, and Joe Haden’s replacement didn’t have much to be ashamed of. He was step-for-step with Allen and Rivers just placed it on his back shoulder with perfect placement. Another time Rivers got popped by Karlos Dansby, but not before he put the ball to 6-foot 6-inch Ladarius Green over Donte Whitner’s outstretched arms. Again, decent coverage, the blitz nearly worked, but San Diego came away with seven.
And of course the end was so very much Cleveland Brownsish. It might be brutal if it wasn’t such a normal occurrence for Cleveland Browns fans. This weekend over at Medium I wrote about Browns fans and the five stages of grief. The little bit that this game impacted my mood indicates that I’m in full-on acceptance mode. The fact that the Browns tied the game at all felt like a victory. The Browns gave the Chargers an extra kick, but in my mind he should have hit the first one anyway. You start rationalizing ways your team can lose instead of win when you’re accepting of your place in the grieving process.
If nothing else, @bottlegate helped Browns fans win the goofy trash talk battle.1
- Look, we all know a drought isn’t really funny, but it’s like a sports hate trash talk kind of funny. [↩]
53 Comments
I thought I passed him on the freeway back to Vegas last night.
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