Browns To Start Skrine, Patterson At Corner; Week 2 Inactives Announced
September 16, 2012Box Score: Browns 27, Bengals 34
September 16, 2012The Browns ran into a Bengals team with some good offensive playmakers, and ultimately couldn’t stay out of their own way to win it. The three big storylines of the Browns game today will be special teams, replacement defensive backs and penalties even though it could have been Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson. Unfortunately, the Browns weren’t able to overcome their mistakes on special teams and defense.
Special teams cost the Browns a gut-punching 81 yard TD to Adam (not Pacman) Jones in the first quarter. It was a foretelling play as Browns players missed arm tackles left and right. It would be indicative of what we would see all day from the Browns’ secondary.
Say what you want about Sheldon Brown (and many of his naysayers feel free) but the Browns missed him. Brown was active, but didn’t see the field a week after a neck stinger. Combine that with the high profile suspension of Joe Haden and the Browns secondary was forced to test its young depth. While I’m not giving up hope on young guys like Trevin Wade and Buster Skrine, there’s no doubting that they hurt the team today. A.J. Green, Andrew Hawkins and Brandon Tate all made the Browns defense look silly at times.
Lastly, penalties just crushed the Browns. False starts, holds, offsides on key plays and by cornerbacks, etc. cost the Browns over 100 yards on 10 penalties. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
But even with all that the Browns had a chance. They scored a late touchdown to bring the game within a score 31-24. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to hold, giving up a field goal to Mike Nugent with an insurance field goal. The Browns drove and got a field goal of their own before failing to get the onside kick.
Still, even with a wider margin of victory for the Browns decidedly weaker opponent, compared to the Eagles, I’m not left with the same feeling of despair that I had last week. The Browns’ defense was frustrating, but losing your two top corners from week-to-week is an understandable degradation.
More importantly, Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson showed a glimpse of what Browns fans were dreaming of before last week’s nightmarish output. Richardson showed that he might just be the first Browns offensive superstar since Kellen Winslow, and he could very well surpass any memory of Winslow in a hurry.
Richardson finished the day with 109 yards and a TD on the ground to go along with 36 yards and a TD in the passing game. Brandon Weeden erased the fears of another 5.1 QB rating as he amassed a 114.9 rating with 322 yards on 26/37 passing and two TDs. All day long, Weeden showed the ability to throw into tight spaces.
There will be plenty of things to talk about this week, but in the end the Browns lose 34-27 to a Bengals team that isn’t as good as the Eagles, and yet, I feel a lot better than I did last week. There’s a lot of work for this Browns team going forward, but at least this feels like a building block of a team to mold into something. We’ve seen what the defense can do in week one. Now we’ve seen what the offense can do in week two. Three more weeks until Haden gets back. A few more weeks after that and Phil Taylor might be back. Maybe just maybe the end of the season won’t be like an away game in Cleveland Browns Stadium.
18 Comments
Quick Notes:
1. Weeden played really well, even after getting hit in the arm on the throwing motion, multiple times, he completed strong passes.
2. Richardson was a beast, looked way more in tune from the following week and was great to see do damage in open space.
3. Though I’m super excited the game was close, It still sucks to know we are going to start the season something like 1-7, I don’t know.
Bur Weeden will never be decent, we already decided last week.
Liked what I saw on offense. Weeden needs some bread and butter plays to build confidence and he’ll be fine. And there was the Richardson explosion.
Someone tell Dmitri Patterson to look to see where the ball is set – ridiculous, he never glances that way.
(Winslow – superstar? So sorry I missed that stage. Wonder how long I was out for).
TRichardson showed why he was the #3 overall selection and I was more then happy to see it. Weeble looked like a different QB especially in the second half when things opened up. BUT the defense gave up a ton of yardage and of course the secondary was shredded to pieces. Tackling was horrible especially in the secondary. The one thing I did like was the DL play especially the pressure they applied but it’s another loss in another way.
4. Owen Marecic can’t catch…period….PERIOD……. “.” <—————!!!!!!!
OWEN MARECIC STINKS AND I DON’T LIKE HIM
It wasn’t an issue because we didn’t recover the onside kick, but the play calling/clock management was iffy when we got down close on the last drive. The TV guys were giving Shurmur credit for making the right call and going for the FG, however they failed to mention that it was two plays and a dink pass over the middle too late. We should have taken one or two shots at the end zone and then kicked. We could have had an extra 30 seconds to score if the correct approach was taken and we happened to recover the onside kick. Shurmur “lucked”? out of that criticism this week.
I agree they needed to recover an onside kick regardless of how the last score came so they could have saved probably 20 seconds or more had they kicked the FG sooner. What made it worse was none of the plays previous to the FG went to the endzone. So in effect they wasted time getting closer which didn’t matter.
Brownies played a hard, close game. TRich looked 100% and Weeden looked like a legit NFL QB. Early mistakes were that punt return TD by Adam Jones and penalties. Refs were more like tigers instead of zebras, and the Shurminator was letting them have it the entire game (good sign from him).
You are right to feel this way. I’m officially fed up with that guy. He has worse hands than Robert “Stone Hands” Royal.
This is the kind of promising game from our offense that I was really hoping for. I seriously think it’s just the wide 9 defensive line scheme… both the Eagles and Lions run it, and both teams had our number. Maybe some day our coaches will figure out how to counter that, but today was a fun game to watch. I don’t think we’re going to the playoffs or anything, so I’m just looking for improvement over the course of the season. We saw some improvement today.
That may be more on Weeden than shurmur. As brian sipe may tell you – Sometimes the QB doesn’t do what the coach wants
Dear Trent Richardson,
I am sorry i doubted you. I love you now.
–saggy
Can we assume, since we both lost by one point to the Eagles, that the Browns are now on par with the Ravens? At least we didn’t cry and wet ourselves over the officiating.
Most importantly, it’s a much-needed improvement. So we’ve got that going for us. I won’t take anything away from that. But playing halfway decent against the Bengals is not something that gets me excited, in any way.
Really didn’t like the play not to lose playcalling at the end of the first half,especially after we got a couple of first downs running. Thought we had at least a chance for a field goal which then means we are playing for the tie or the win at the end instead of hoping to score late and then recover an on-sides. That’s on the coaches playing scared.
Next up: long passes down the sideline. Get to work Weeden! 😀
I second this^
The only reason he is still on this team is because he was a 4th round pick, if he was undrafted he would be gone by now. I would like to see Brad Smelley on this roster and getting a fair shot at the job. And why do we keep 4 rbs on the 53? We only play two, which means one will always be inactive and another, hardesty, will sit there alone on the bench. We should keep 3 and promote Smelley