When they needed a stop like this one, the Browns' defense was too gassed to prevent a last-second Raiders field goal. (Cleveland Browns)
Bah humbug! Angry Las Vegas Raiders dump coal on Browns’ playoff hopes with last-second 16-14 win
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
Santa was on the rooftop.
All the Browns needed was one more first down. Then, just one more defensive stop. Then, a missed field goal toward the Dawg Pound.
Where were the crazy winds to blow Daniel Carlson’s 48-yard field goal off course on the last play?
Instead of “Ho, ho, ho,” Cleveland fans were left cursing, “No! No! No!” when Carlson’s field goal floated through to inflict the most heartbreaking defeat of the Kevin Stefanski era, 16-14, to the Las Vegas Raiders.
The loss doesn’t extinguish the Browns playoff hopes. It just makes the annoying Christmas Day assignment in Green Bay in five days another must-win. A loss there would be fairly inconsequential had the Browns taken care of business in this AFC game.
The Browns fell to fourth place with a 7-7 record – only a game behind Cincinnati and Baltimore. But they play each other on Sunday, so one will end the week at 9-6. A loss to the Packers would leave the Browns two games behind with only two to play.
Deprived of 18 players lost due to COVID-19, including 10 starters plus their top backup quarterback, plus their head coach, the Browns fell behind by 10-0, battled back to take a 14-13 lead with 3:45 to play, made an interception with 2:47 to play, and still lost in a brutal ending to a chaotic week.
“It was so cool and the stadium was rocking,” said fill-in quarterback Nick Mullens, who might have been forever known as St. Nick after his touchdown pass to Harrison Bryant on a fourth-down scramble-and-throw gave the Browns their only lead. “I really believed in the fourth quarter that this night was destined for Cleveland, but sometimes it does not work out like that.”
Tell us about it.
The Ghosts of Christmases past have their own suite in FirstEnergy Stadium.
The Raiders didn’t want to be here after the NFL rescheduled the game 48 hours to allow the Browns to field enough players to play the game. In fact, the Browns came up with 45, two shy of the normal maximum.
The Browns’ defense was so gassed at the end – Myles Garrett returned after barely limping to the sideline with an apparent groin injury – it could not get close to quarterback Derek Carr or tackle on the fateful Raiders’ drive.
Carr completed five passes to move from the Raiders’ 29-yard line to the Browns’ 30 in 1 minute, 47 seconds to set up the winning kick by the Grinch, er, Carlson. Shoddy coverage and indifferent tackling hurt the Browns’ cause.
Before turning it over to the Raiders on a punt at the two-minute warning, the Browns put the ball in Pro Bowler Nick Chubb’s hands three times. The first half was slow sledding behind a makeshift offensive line that had Joel Bitonio making his first NFL start at left tackle, Michael Dunn playing left guard and Blake Hance right tackle. Chubb came alive in the second half after netting only 14 yards in the first half. All the Browns needed was one first down as the Raiders burned their final two timeouts.
First down: Chubb over Pro Bowler Bitonio for two yards.
Second down: Chubb over Bitonio for five yards.
Third down: Chubb behind Pro Bowler Wyatt Teller for no gain.
“It is very frustrating,” said Chubb, who finished with 91 yards and a 4-yard touchdown on 23 carries. “In the NFL, you have to finish teams like that. The ball was in my hands, but it was not enough. That is something that we cannot do anything about now, but in the future, I have to make a play.”
COVID claimed 10 Browns starters, but it was two regulars, Chubb and kicker Chase McLaughlin, who earned coal in their stockings. McLaughlin missed short and to the right on a 47-yard field goal try to the closed end on the last play of the first half. It was the only Browns’ possession that didn’t end in a punt in a 10-0 deficit at halftime.
“You have to make those kicks,” said acting head coach Mike Priefer, the special teams coordinator who has suffered six McLaughlin misses in his last 11 attempts.
“It hurts,” said Mullens. “Everybody is going to look at that one [play for each] player and just not being able to finish it. With the NFL, games are a chain-link of events. I think we had a lot of three-and-outs and just missed opportunities. You can’t really pinpoint one reason why we lost. It just happened the way it happened.”
Mullens was poised and error-free in his emergency start with COVID-positive Baker Mayfield and Case Keenum live-tweeting encouragement from their homes. He couldn’t sustain drives in the first half, mostly because of underthrowing Donovan Peoples-Jones on four occasions. But he loosened up when Chubb found some running room in the third quarter.
Mullens cobbled together two touchdown drives in the second half – something the Browns’ regulars could not do in four previous games this season.
The go-ahead drive was a masterful piece of game management, consisting of 14 plays and eating 8:22 off the clock. After an 11-yard TD run by Chubb was negated by a Teller holding penalty, Mullens negotiated a first-and-20 from the 21 sequence. It came down to fourth-and-5 from the 6-yard line as the game clock ticked under four minutes.
“That was a no-brainer [to go for it],” Priefer said.
With David Njoku and Bryant joining Peoples-Jones and Rashard Higgins as receivers, and Chubb in the backfield, Mullens coolly evaded pressure moving to his left and threw a strike to Bryant in the end zone.
“I think a lot of touchdowns in the red zone are not on rhythm, so that is just a good example of how to get seven points inside the red zone,” said Mullens, who was 20 of 30 for 147 yards on a very competent stand-in performance.
For the second year in a row, Stefanski had to watch helplessly from his rec room as a pivotal game unfolded. The Browns won their wild card game in Pittsburgh last season without their head coach.That was a surreal, everything-went-right contest. This one was extremely tough to stomach.
“That locker room right now is hurting,” Priefer said. “That is the most I have seen it in that kind of pain.”
“It hurt a lot,” Bitonio said. “What we had to go through during the week and the guys who stepped up and put it all on the line … it did hurt. I’ve been a part of a few losses that have hurt. That is definitely up there.”
They can still have a merry Christmas. But it will be their toughest work day of the season.
