Remember the towering snit the Cleveland Browns and their fans spun themselves into last January when JuJu Smith-Schuster’s pregame playoff analysis included the memorable phrase, “The Browns is the Browns,” like that was a bad thing?
It wasn’t just because Clevelanders are notorious sticklers for subject-verb agreement either.
Determined to prove they were not the same breed of dawg pound lap dogs with which the Steelers had grown so comfortable over the years, last year’s Browns chased Pittsburgh out of the playoffs so fast it was almost comical. They led 28-0 after one quarter at Heinz Field. They didn’t even bring their head coach. They could have won it in their street clothes.
But less than two months into the new season, with a chance to bury Mike Tomlin’s team in an AFC basement from which there might have been no escape, the Browns managed just 10 points, about one for every 10 physical and mental mistakes that accrued directly to the Steelers on an afternoon perhaps best described by one inescapable conclusion: The Browns are the Browns — again.
“I’d have to look at it,” Kevin Stefanski said at least five times as the Cleveland-area media asked about one Brownie blunder after the next during the post-game presser. Stefanski, who missed January’s playoff performance with COVID, had no ready answer to anything he didn’t have to look at again, even the way Pittsburgh’s defense manhandled his vaunted ground game and spooked his seriously overrated receivers.
“I’d have to study it, but in our pass game we’re often times looking for completions,” he said helpfully, but even with the impulse to absolve Odell Beckham Jr. for not coming down with a pass near the Steelers goal line in the fourth quarter, Stefanski couldn’t quite get there: “Obviously he’s a player we’re counting on. We had a couple of opportunities, they just took it away.”
Beckham was, in fact, targeted only that once, perhaps because neither he nor fellow wideout Jarvis Landry has located an end zone this year.
Landry was targeted by Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield 10 times Sunday, but caught only five, and far fewer when it counted. Thanks to a doomed fake field goal that got Steelers kicker Chris Boswell concussed late in the first half, which meant that Pittsburgh’s fourth-quarter lead was 15-10 instead of 20-10, the Browns still had a puncher’s chance when they started at their own 39 with 4:22 left in the game.
Mayfield-to-Landry got them a first down at the Pittsburgh 39, but a subsequent first-down throw Landry just plain dropped at the 25 as the clock blinked under three minutes.
“That,” said a startled Tony Romo, analyzing for CBS, “was a big not catch.”
That was followed by the not catch by Beckham, then a brain cramp offsides by Browns wideout Tashard Higgins (Cleveland’s not been penalized more yards than any team in the NFL for nothin’), and then, on 4th-and-12 from the Steelers 26 at the two-minute warning, Mayfield threw Landry another dart that probably should have been caught and was not.
“I’d have to look at it,” said Stefanski. “We have high expectations, high standards for our guys, and anytime you don’t come down with it, I know they’re disappointed. But bottom line is that we didn’t make enough plays. Didn’t do enough things to beat an AFC North opponent, didn’t play complementary football.”
Even had the Browns been able to manage a pass completion of more than 24 yards, they were sabotaged by a running game that figured to give Pittsburgh innumerable problems but just didn’t. Something was obviously amiss from Cleveland’s second possession, when a direct snap to D’Ernest Johnson (146 yards against Denver) went nowhere thanks to Cam Heyward on third down, followed by a 4th-and-1 attempt on which the redoubtable Nick Chubb that was stopped cold by Devin Bush and T.J. Watt.
Over 60 minutes, Chubb would manage but 61 yards on 16 carries, Johnson 22 on four.
“That’s an awesome run team and they’re really challenging; but largely I felt we stood up,” said Tomlin. “The only time we didn’t was, you know, schematically, when we were trying to catch them in a play pass and I was putting the defense in less than ideal circumstances. But when I put them in run-stopping structure, they stopped the run all day, and they deserve credit for that.”
That they do, and maybe a coaching staff that was looking at three consecutive losses as October began deserved credit for figuring out more than just how to be patient with a run game that looked dead in the water.
“It’s days like today that give you an indication of what you could be,” said the head man, who again used the bye week to his great advantage (he’s 11-4 coming out of them). “We’ll continue to write that story negatively or positively, but today was a good day.”
You might, should you care to, write that the Browns are again down in the basement. That shouldn’t require a lot of imagination.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @genecollier
First Published: November 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: November 1, 2021, 10:02 a.m.
