Browns win the turnover battle, lose the war

Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns and NFL analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.

LONDON

The Browns are so obsessed with giveaways that they pretty much gave away a victory to win the turnover battle.

They stripped and recovered two Minnesota turnovers and didn’t commit one on  their own. That’s the first time they’ve gone plus-2 in turnovers since Week 11 last year. Whoopee! They lost that one, too.

Additionally, their special teams held their own while the Vikings made penalty after penalty. Quinshon Judkins had his first career 100-yard game, and quarterback Dillon Gabriel’s NFL debut was encouraging – 19 of 33 for 190 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions.

But an incredibly conservative game plan bit them at the end. Failure to earn more than one first down on three key possessions in the fourth quarter enabled Carson Wentz to re-find his game in time to put together an 80-yard TD drive at the end and send the Browns back to America with a 21-17 loss.

A raucus audience in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium of 61,082, including the cast of Ted Lasso, saw the Browns fail to reach 20 points for the 10^th game in a row.

Wentz’s winning throw of 12 yards to Jordan Addison at the front right pylon with 25 seconds left punctuated a brilliant game plan by Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, who finessed a win despite four emergency fill-ins on his offensive line.

O’Connell’s quick-passing plan kept the Browns’ ravenous defensive front from devouring Wentz, who was sacked three times but hit on only three other occasions.

Alex Wright and Isaiah McGuire stripped fumbles of Minnesota’s two pedestrian running backs, and Grant Delpit and Mahmoud Diabate recovered them.

The Browns capitalized on the first turnover with a TD, Gabriel getting his first on a 1-yard toss to Harold Fannin. Gabriel’s dart to David Njoku from 9 yards out in the third quarter gave the Browns a 17-14 lead.

But the Browns wasted the second takeaway as the game lapsed into the fourth quarter, and that is when Stefanski went full conservative mode. Gabriel hadn’t attempted a pass of 20 yards all game, and Stefanski called the fourth quarter like he was sitting on a 13-point lead – not three points.

Particularly nauseating was a three-play sequence with 3:27 left and the Browns starting at their 41 after a 12-yard punt return by Gage Larvadain.

It went like this:

* Handoff inside to Judkins for minus-1. Vikings timeout.

* Handoff inside to Judkins for minus-1. Vikings timeout.

* Gabriel intentional overthrow for Isaiah Bond.

* Punt.

Four plays. Elapsed time: 22 seconds.

“Whenever you don't come through in a drive, you always think about doing something different, yes,” Stefanski said.

As Wentz was moving 80 yards in 10 plays for the game-winning score, Stefanski burned his three timeouts at 1:10 left, :59 and :54. He said it was to give his defense a breather and to preserve time in case Minnesota tied the game with a field goal.

Gabriel looked poised and competent in his first NFL outing, but he wasn’t asked to do too much.

Did he feel handcuffed by the conservative game plan?

“Not necessarily,” he answered. “And I think you want to be aggressive, but you want to be smart as well and understanding what we're doing offensively. There's things that some people take the bait and then there's times you can be really effective by taking what's there.

“And I don't want to say it's a balance – but it's balance as a quarterback. You've got to be smart and aggressive when it's your time to take shots, when it's your time to go get five and live another down. So that's a balance that I'll continue to teeter, and you always try to push the issue and be aggressive. But at the same time you don't go broke taking off profits.”

Judkins was a powerful force in averaging 4.8 yards (110 on 23 attempts). Additional runs of 56 and 11 yards were wiped out by holding penalties. Judkins also had 18 yards receiving on one catch. But the Vikings stopped Judkins on third-and-1 with Adin Huntington blocking in front of him to begin the fourth quarter. That proved to be a giant stop because the Browns had to punt from their own 10-yard line.

“He’s a dawg,” left tackle KT Leveston said of Judkins. “He’s showing he’s going to be a dominant player in this league.”

“He played his butt off,” Gabriel said. “He's a guy we rely on. I think the world of him. He's a guy who is a workhorse, and I don't see that changing.”

In all, the Browns’ tackles – Leveston played most of the game with Cam Robinson getting only one error-filled series, and right tackle Jack Conklin, in his first game in a month -- were whistled for six penalties. And to think the Vikings played better with four emergency linemen, including a guard making his first-ever appearance at center.

“Looking back, there's things we can all clean up, and it starts with me,” Gabriel said.

Cornerback Greg Newsome thought the Browns covered Justin Jefferson well in man, but the All-Pro receiver burned zone coverage for several of his seven receptions for 123 yards. Jefferson went up high for a Wentz throw of 21 yards that took the Vikings to the Browns’ 27 on the winning drive. Wentz outleaped Denzel Ward. Jefferson is a player the Browns don’t have, of course.

When Wentz got to the 12, he ignored Jefferson on the left and tossed a perfect ball to Addison at the right pylon with Ward in the area.

“I’ve got to reroute him inside and not leave it so wide for the safety. I take full accountability for that,” Ward said.

Stefanski’s post-game comments were tired and familiar.

“We need to do a better job closing out,” he said. “That's an offensive thing, defense, special teams, coaches, players, you name it. We've got to come away and be at our best in those moments, and we were not. And that's the disappointing, frustrating part for me. But we'll keep grinding. We'll get back and get back to work. That's what we've got to do.”

Their reward for practicing in the English countryside, participating in the NFL’s International Series, and falling to 1-4 after their second loss in eight years in London is a date in Pittsburgh on Sunday.

So they follow their longest trip of the season with their shortest. But we all know that short bus ride to Pittsburgh has been the Green Mile to most of their seasons.