Not often do team, fans, and sporting media intelligentsia share identical desires. But, for countless seasons since Cleveland was awarded a newly constituted team in 1999, each has longed to be warmed by a meaningful final game in the cold of December.
Well, the 2020 Browns have listened and with only the month altered—it’s a January final game—have gone out of their way to give everyone what they wanted and more. They even raised the stakes for their Sunday, January 3 meeting with the indomitable Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s beat the newly crowned champion of the AFC North Division or miss the seven-team expanded playoffs that only a week ago seemed a virtual shoo-in, with perhaps even a shot at the North title.
To deliver this game to First Energy Stadium for the limited home crowd that the State of Ohio permits because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Browns had to do the next-to-impossible Sunday and lose to the one-win New York Jets in their shared Jersey stadium. They were down for it. Way, way down in a complete team effort led by failed quarterback Baker Mayfield who fumbled nearly as many times as he completed passes to a makeshift group that had to be relied on because of the NFL’s COVID-19 protocols.
It was something of a miracle that Mayfield was able to throw 53 times, given that he kept dropping the ball before he could spin it out of his hand and toward a strange set of numbers bearing unfamiliar names such as Ja’Marcus Bradley and Derrick Willies from the practice squad and roster newcomer Marvin Hall, who arrived earlier in December.
The reinforcements were required because the team’s top four wide receivers—Jarvis Landry, Rashard Higgins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, and KhaDarel Hodge, as well as linebacker Jacob Phillips—had been consigned to the COVID-19 reserve list. Tracing identified them as having high-risk close contacts with B.J. Goodson, middle linebacker and defensive heart and soul, who tested positive. People took notice.
Peter King, who writes Football Morning in America, noted: “Cleveland endangered its playoff life by lax mask-wearing and close contact with a COVID-positive teammate in a therapeutic hot tub at the team facility.” This happened Saturday morning and resulted in closing the facility and cancellation of a preparatory walk-through less than 24 hours before meeting the Jets. The resulting 23-16 loss, Mayfield committing three fumbles, two of which led to a New York touchdown and field goal, and the third, at the Jets’ 16-yard-line with 1:18 remaining, assuring the rally in progress would be a failure like its instigator claimed he was. Mayfield had accomplices. The New York Times Benjamin Hoffman believed it took “a total team effort for Cleveland to lose.” A wit, that Hoffman.
Mayfield, failing to appreciate that fact, refused to share credit, especially with the new guys. “Put it on me for not doing my job,” he said when addressed the media on Zoom, “for not playing at a high level like I should have, for not getting these guys going and finishing out this game.” Coach Kevin Stefanski supported his new on-field, load carriers, including left tackle Kendall Lamb and rookie right guard Nick Harris who were making their first starts. Lamb replaced Jedrick Wills Jr. who was ill and couldn’t play because of COVID protocols, and Harris was subbing for previously injured Wyatt Teller (high ankle sprain) and his backup Chris Hubbard (knee surgery).
“We trust the guys who were playing today,” Stefanski said. “That’s why they are Cleveland Browns. That’s really not the story here. We just did not do enough. We did too many things that a losing team does, and that is what you get when you do that.”
You lose. You lose to a team that should have been much easier to beat—fiery resolve or not—than will be the Steelers should they believe it more important to win the No. 2 AFC seed than to rest key players, including quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, in the game that could be meaningful to both teams, not to mention everyone watching.
It is the perfect illustration that one should be careful for what one wishes.
If Mayfield wants to be a leader of men—and he is good at it—he cannot be a fumbler of footballs. It is his most important personal responsibility: Protect the ball. And he had been doing well, throwing few interceptions and seldom fumbling. So why the setback? The receivers were not ready to fully replace Pro Bowl players like Jarvis Landry, and the offensive line that has been a tower of strength with Bill Callahan’s tutelage had been chipped away by injury and illness to the point it could not protect Mayfield. He took so many sacks (four) he might as well have been working a grocery parking lot.
It became obvious that the line could neither protect Mayfield nor create cracks in the defense through which running backs Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt have become accustomed to building great heads of steam as they smack down anyone in their way and search for the green, green grass of the promised land. The Browns were averaging 152.6 yards per game, third in the NFL. Chubb gained 28 yards on 11 carries and Hunt 11 yards on 4. They were more effective as receivers, and Mayfield sought out his tight ends as never before this season—134 yards of the team’s 254.
It was not a winning formula and one that offers less hope than the segments interested in seeing a meaningful final game would like. They’ve already shared some less than meaningful moments during the New Browns long-lasting cold stretch since going to the playoffs in 2002. The Steelers could present a challenge to getting there again.
For Stefanski and other optimists nothing changed with the Jets loss. “What is ahead of us,” he said, “is everything we set out to do. It is all still right there.”
Ah, The Playoffs.
And if the Browns do reach them for the first time since their sole appearance in 2002? There will be no teams as poor as the Jets and a number that could be better than Pittsburgh. Now that . . . would give new meaning to meaningful game.
