Every Browns team builder, with varying degrees of sincerity and commitment, pays lip service to constructing a team built on the toughness it takes to play in winter weather that Cleveland is known to occasionally experience.
New General Manager Andrew Berry and Coach Kevin Stefanski have been no exception. When the weather turns frightful, as it did on a post-Halloween Sunday with the Raiders in town, running the football, controlling the clock and playing surly, ill-tempered defense often provide the best means to sunny-and-warm results.
But some not-so-funny things happened in a 16-6 Browns loss.
The team built to run opponents into the ground got its nose smacked into the very same by one whose run game had been limping along with the support(?) of a defense that Coach Jon Gruden had not been able to locate with a search party. The Raiders, who now call Sin City, a.k.a., Las Vegas, home, played as if they were still representing blue-collar Oakland, where ghouls haunted the stadium on Sundays, Halloween or not.
The Browns had become a points-machine in recent weeks. Against a defense only long-odds, inveterate gamblers could find appealing, Cleveland could not scratch up a single touchdown. When it did score on a Baker Mayfield-to-Jarvis Landry pass, the eye in the sky—or, NFL New York headquarters—took it away. Replay review revealed the ball’s itty-bitty point touched the ground before sure-handed Landry had controlled it.
When the calls were not going against Cleveland’s receivers, they were dropping Mayfield’s passes as if they had blocks of ice for hands. There were at least five oopsies, sometimes after a catch, as in the case of a fumble by rookie tight end Harrison Bryant, but more often clean malfunctions. David Njoku’s malfeasances would seem to indicate his mitts and chest of iron had checked out of Cleveland, as the rest of him would like to do. (Please, give him his wish, if not now, then as soon as possible.)
Berry and Stefanski have professed their love for Njoku, who does not seem to love them back. If they slap their analytics analyzer on him, they will surely notice he is not worth the nice contract extension they awarded running back1A Kareem Hunt and intend to give to RB1 Nick Chubb. The injured Chubb’s absence was never more apparent than Sunday. Hunt gained 66 yards on 14 carries but clearly missed road-grader right guard Wyatt Teller who makes the run-game run when not in the shop for repairs.
Instead, the Raiders’ Josh Jacobs, who had not this season shown the form that earned him kudos from Gruden in his rookie season when he became the first Raider rookie to run for more than 1,000 yards, had a performance to remember. He went over the 100-yard mark for the first time this year (128 on 31 workhorse carries). “It is about time we had a run game like that,” Jacobs said. “…It just feels good to be that dominant.”
The Browns remember.
But with Chubb and Teller and tight end Austin Hooper (appendectomy) missing and injured defensive end Myles Garrett on and off the field, Cleveland was anything but dominant. Garrett, who came into the game with an ankle injury, added a knee problem to his hospital chart early in the game. “We couldn’t get off the field,” said Garrett, who did so but only in order to visit the medical tent. “They were better and stronger up front.” The Raiders controlled the ball for 37:43, the Browns had it only 22:17.
“We went back in time a little bit to an old-school attack,” Gruden said. “When we have to, we can get into some old-school double tight end sets and run the ball like teams used to in this league.” It is the kind of thing that might cause Gruden to sneer maniacally, like his spitting image and alter ego, Chucky, the demonic doll from the 1988 horror movie Child’s Play. Even with more help than usual from his defensive line mates Olivier Vernon, Sheldon Richardson, and Larry Ogunjobi, Garrett’s sack streak ended at seven games and the Browns could not stop Jacobs or even the running of quarterback Derrick Carr.
The Browns wavered more than the uprights waved in the wind. They come off an impressive fourth-quarter performance to win in Cincinnati and the best they can do at home against Las Vegas is plunk a field goal attempt off the dancing left upright. So what is to be made of the team’s 5-3 record as it takes a week off at the season’s halfway point? Berry ought to step out from behind the curtain and offer an opinion.
Remember the predictions before the season began? They ranged from The Land on Demand’s Tony Grossi (6-10) to a couple of optimists who reversed those numbers. Most of the guesstimates, however, fell between 9-7 and the playoffs as wild card and 7-9 and no playoffs. So 5-3 looks reasonable, yet this mystery of team has offered a loss to a foe it was picked to beat in a place and weather it was made for, and Mayfield announced the 5-3 “should be a lot better.” Given the remaining schedule, it could be.
If the Browns cannot win five games among 1-6 Houston, 2-4-1 Philadelphia, 1-6 Jacksonville, 5-2 Tennessee, 5-2 Baltimore, New York’s horrendous 1-6 Giants and 0-8 Jets, and, finally, 7-0 Pittsburgh, they ought to be consigned to play Chucky’s team again in a horror-show flashback. But, with a half-game lead, Vegas may already have done its damage to the New Browns’ chance to go Wild Card Weekending for the first time since 2002, when, of course, that 9-7 team lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
