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Season Lost For Cleveland Browns After Loss To Chargers

By Zac Wassink

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Any debates about if Josh McCown or Johnny Manziel should serve as the starting quarterback of the Cleveland Browns when the Browns travel to take on the Baltimore Ravens next Sunday have disappeared. That is a positive that the Browns can take from a heartbreaking loss to the San Diego Chargers.

It’s the only positive the Browns have after going to 1-3.

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The Browns may not be the worst overall team in the National Football League after four regular season games. It is difficult to imagine that any other NFL side is as undisciplined as are these Browns. 12 penalties for a total of 91 yards a damage (h/t ESPN).

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Free agenct signing Tramon Williams, given $10 million guaranteed by the Browns in the offseason (h/t Spotrac), jumped offside to gift the Chargers with a second attempt at a game-winning field goal, one that was converted by San Diego kicker Josh Lambo to cap off the 30-27 victory.

You wouldn’t believe it was real if the team in question wasn’t the Browns.

The season is not over for the Browns because the team fell to 1-3 after the loss to the Chargers. The season isn’t over because the schedule does not get any easier for Cleveland moving forward. No single injury or event has guaranteed doom and gloom for the Browns between now and the final game of the campaign. Neither McCown nor Manziel nor any Pro Bowl quarterback currently playing in the NFL today could, by himself, save the Browns.

The season is over because this is one bad football team.

Head coach Mike Pettine has preached his “Play like a Brown” mentality since he accepted the job in the winter of 2014. This mantra is supposedly built on several pillars that include: Playing smart and mistake-free football, having a defense that is punishing versus rushing attacks, starting a secondary that has athletic defensive backs who can make big plays, and having multiple veterans inside of the locker room who can help younger athletes avoid noteworthy miscues during games.

The Browns are none of those things right now. Not a single one. Not close.

You would not have known, if you watched the game with the television volume turned down, that the Chargers were a walking-wounded team versus the Browns. San Diego was a couple of additional unfortunate breaks away from literally having zero available wide receivers. The Chargers were one misstep from having to search in the stands for a healthy offensive lineman who could play a quarter of football. Cleveland could not have picked a better time to play the Chargers.

None of that mattered.

San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers carved through what is alleged to be a great, not good, defense of the Browns when it mattered most. Rivers, on his team’s second-to-last drive, did well to hang in the pocket as long as possible before he connected with Dontrelle Inman on a short pass over the middle. Inman sped away from his defender and from everybody else wearing brown and orange on the field before he was tackled a step away from the end zone. That 68-yard play helped put the Chargers ahead by eight points in the fourth quarter.

The defense of the Browns was given a reprieve thanks to the previously mentioned McCown and to tight end Gary Barnidge. Barnidge kept the Browns alive with a circus grab on the cusp of the goal line, and he reeled in the short touchdown pass to get the Browns to within a two-point conversion of tying the game. McCown finished the comeback with a sharp pass to Taylor Gabriel, presenting a vaunted defense with a second opportunity to, at the very least, keep San Diego off of the scoreboard.

Rivers may have quietly been laughing to himself as he stepped onto the field, because he made it look easy in the final 2:03. He picked up 22 yards on his first two passes. Rivers and the Chargers gained 27 yards on the next pair of plays. The only time San Diego was taken to third down occurred because Rivers dropped to a knee so that he could line up a field goal. It was only fitting that Williams, a Cleveland cornerback, embraced his inner Dwayne Rudd and committed an unforgivable penalty at the worst time.

Perhaps most frustrating of all for fans of the Browns is that the previously-mentioned McCown had a performance that was shockingly impressive. McCown completed 32 of 41 pass attempts, roughly 78 percent of his registered throws. He threw for 356 yards and two touchdowns. McCown committed an early turnover, a fumble, but he quickly put that mistake out of his memory and played well enough for the Browns to win.

That McCown was thoroughly failed by a defense that is supposed to be the strength of the Browns is a bad look for Pettine. General manager Ray Farmer may be an even bigger enemy in the eyes of Cleveland fans for the way that Farmer has built this roster. This defense got to Rivers an average of once per quarter despite the fact that the Chargers were without multiple starting offensive linemen. Only two of those occurrences were sacks. The Browns again had no play-makers on the defensive side of the ball, and there is no reason to believe that trend is coming to an end anytime soon.

Rookie defensive tackle Danny Shelton barely deserves a mention after games. Second-year cornerback and, like Shelton, first-year draft pick Justin Gilbert can only get on the field for kick returns. Fellow CB Joe Haden is banged up with a broken finger and injured ribs; not that Haden played all that well in the first three games of the season. The biggest reason for why the Browns were only hit for 438 yards by the San Diego defense is because a football field has size limits.

McCown deserves better. Manziel deserves better. Barnidge deserves better. WR Travis Benjamin, who continues to be a revelation, deserves better. Running backs Isaiah Crowell and Duke Johnson, who finally played like a menacing one-two punch out of the backfield, deserve better. The same cannot be said for Pettine and Farmer, who have put together a defense that has struggled to stop backups let alone contain elite weapons.

Why should anybody believe that Antonio Brown and the Pittsburgh Steelers won’t torch the defense of the Browns once QB Ben Roethlisberger is healthy? Why wouldn’t you start WR A.J. Green in your weekly fantasy football competitions when the Browns take on the Cincinnati Bengals? Even a non-elite Joe Flacco should be able to guide the Ravens to a relatively easy victory against the Cleveland defense. Only four games have been played, and already football fans in northeast Ohio can start counting down the days until the Cleveland Cavaliers open up their National Basketball Association season.

Same old Browns.

Next: Is It Johnny Manziel Time?

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