Once the Saints stopped Kareem Hunt cold on this third-and-1 carry in the third quarter, the Browns went into pass-happy mode. (Associated Press)
The team that was mentally tougher and willing to run should have been the Browns, but wasn’t
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.
The Browns might as well build their own dome stadium because they call games as if they play in one. Or as if they want to play in one.
On the second-coldest day in history for a Browns home game – 6 degrees and a minus-16 wind chill at kickoff – the Browns put themselves in position of having to throw the ball way too much.
They blew a 10-point lead and chucked the ball 19 times in the second half while the New Orleans Saints – the dome-based, NFC South also-rans – put on a clinic of how to conquer a bitterly cold and windy day.
The Saints rushed for 152 yards on 39 attempts and threw only 15 times in pounding out a 17-10 win over the Browns, spoiling Christmas Eve for the 20,000 or so hearty souls on hand and formally eliminating the Browns from playoff mathematics.
Both teams left the field with 6-9 records. The Saints are still alive in a division with no team over .500. The Browns now are in a two-team fight with Pittsburgh for a last-place finish in the AFC North. It could come down to the season finale in Pittsburgh in two weeks.
The Saints arrived in Cleveland Thursday night and were not blind to the perilous conditions awaiting them.
“We knew the weather conditions were going to be a big factor, and we knew we were going to have to be able to run the football well,” said Saints coach Dennis Allen.
He also pointed out another necessity on this day.
“We talked all week that this game was going to be a game about mental toughness, and I thought our guys showed incredible grit,” he said.
The Browns fell short on both counts.
It’s not that they ignored the run. They ran the ball 18 times in the first half and 16 in the second half. But after New Orleans baffled the Browns’ defense with their Taysom Hill-Alvin Kamara running attack to tie the game, 10-10, on the first possession of the second half, the Browns went into pass-happy mode.
Deshaun Watson was superb in the first half. He scored his first touchdown with the Browns on a 12-yard keeper run and should have put another TD on the board if Amari Cooper had not slipped on the ice-covered west end zone. (The entire west end of the field had big splotches of ice and snow despite the field being covered by a tarp hours before the teams arrived. Coach Kevin Stefanski said, “I think it was a condensation-type thing.”)
But in the second half, Watson had five possessions without producing points. One ended with an interception and another with an ill-advised fourth-and-2 deep ball to Donovan Peoples-Jones that sailed with the wind. The final possession was an agonizing sequence of near-misses that were not on Watson but on his receivers.
Watson made two third-down conversions on good throws to Cooper, and then an 18-yard completion to David Bell took the ball to the Saints’ 15 with 43 seconds left and no timeouts.
After a throwaway, Watson put the ball on the hands of DPJ in the left corner of the end zone, but Peoples-Jones couldn’t secure it while getting his feet down inbounds as he was hit by cornerback Alontae Taylor.
“I’ve got to make that play,” Peoples-Jones said.
On the next play, Watson fired on the mark to David Njoku breaking free down the middle. But Njoku, whose heroic one-handed touchdown grab helped secure a win against Tampa Bay in overtime in Jacoby Brissett’s last start, couldn’t bring in this ball. It whipped through his hands and off his chest.
“No excuse, I dropped that ball,” Njoku fessed up. I felt I let the team down. I apologized to Deshaun in the locker room.”
Watson then was sacked on fourth down, sending the frigid fans home angry and assuring a second straight losing season under Stefanski.
The team’s record under Watson is 2-2 with two games to go. He showed more signs of improvement, which keeps the last two games at Washington and Pittsburgh more interesting than the usual mop-up contests at the end of a typical Browns losing season.
“We have to finish strong, not just for ourselves because we have to have pride in what we do,” Watson said. “We have to come to work each and every day and give everything that we have. We can’t just go out there and lollygag. These are two opportunities for not just us as individuals but as a team and as this organization to try to get a boost for next year.”
As usual, there's always next year.
