Cleveland Browns Suffer Crushing Loss at Home to Baltimore Ravens – Lose 37-27

–Being run over from behind by an 18-wheeler.

–Watching John Kruk perform a pommel horse routine — and slip with his legs open.

–Contracting a staph infection.

–Being a Bengals fan.

Other than that last one, I’m fairly certain that all of the first three would be more pleasant experiences than watching today’s Browns-Ravens game. Much like in the first meeting of the season, the Browns played well and hung tough early — hell, we even had a 27-13 second half lead today — only to see the Ravens grab the momentum and never give it back. The end result was a 37-27 home, divisional loss for the Browns. They are now 3-5, need a telescope to see the top of the AFC North standings, and are grasping by the thinnest of threads to any hope of making the playoffs.

Before we go into any more analysis of today’s game, let’s gauge the feeling of the Midwest Sports Fans community as to what the Browns playoff chances are as we sit right now:

After the crushing loss to Baltimore, how would you rate the Browns playoff chances? (with a little help from Jim Mora and Jim Fassel...)

• What's that? Uh--Playoffs? Don't talk about--playoffs? You kiddin' me? Playoffs?
• It's going to be tough, but don't count the Browns out just yet.
• I'm upping the ante. You want in, get in. You want out, get out. This team is going to the playoffs.

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Okay, time to assess the carnage. I wish I had one of those airline sickness bags next to me right now, just in case I get sick while reliving that debacle of a second half.

First, let’s review the keys to the game that I discussed in this week’s preview

Key #1: Get Jamal Lewis the ball 20 times.

Jamal Lewis rushed the ball 19 times. By my math, that is less than 20. And the Browns lost. I guess I probably just stop here right?

The Browns are 11-1 all-time when Jamal Lewis gets 20 or more carries. The one loss, I’m pretty sure, was to Baltimore. (Someone please correct me if this is wrong.) And as my brother said when I was espousing this statistic during the game and imploring the Browns to get him 20 carries, “So if it’s 4th and 20 and we’re down, we should just bang Jamal Lewis into the line to make sure he has 20 carries?”

Obviously not.

The goal of getting the ball to Jamal Lewis 20 times is to control the clock and establish a solid running game. In 19 carries, Jamal was only able to muster 49 yards and the Ravens won the clock battle 33:45-26:15. So one more carry would not have made a difference. What would have made a difference, in my opinion, is for the coaches to be more creative in getting Jamal Lewis, Jason Wright, and Jerome Harrison involved in this game. Too often, we went run-run on 1st and 2nd down and were left with horrid 3rd down situations. Why not more screen passes? We threw to Jason Wright once and he took it to the house. Why not a few change-of-pace runs with Jerome Harrison? Why not some misdirection? Did anyone else feel like we ran the same damn running play every time? I just did not see much creativity or adjusting, and that was very frustrating.

20 carries or not, the running that we did do was not productive. And it made it very difficult on Derek Anderson to constantly be in 3rd and long situations, especially in the 2nd half with Eric Steinbach out and the Ravens smelling blood and teeing off on Anderson every time he dropped back.

Key #2: Shaun Rogers needs to play like a beast.

Shaun Rogers had nine tackles and a sack. He made some plays and did some dancing. But the defense as a whole let the Browns down today. We can say whatever we want about the offense, but we scored 27 points. That should be enough to beat the Baltimore Ravens, especially when they are playing without Willis McGahee.

The Browns have been playing bend-but-don’t-break D all year long. We’ve given up yards but made big plays when we needed them. Not today. Brandon McDonald was repeatedly beaten in the first half, and Eric Wright got torched a few times in the second half. And once again our run defense made an opposing running back look like Jim Brown. Rookie Ray Rice rushed for 154 yards on 21 carries, good for 7.3 yards a pop. This included his 60-yard back breaker in the second half that swung the momentum towards the Ravens side — momentum that the Browns were never able to recover.

The defense did make some good plays today, they got some sacks, and were not completely awful. But when it came time to step up and make the plays that win games, the defense failed miserably. Up 27-13 with the Ravens facing a 3rd and 13 after a huge sack by Kamerion Wimbley, the Browns folded like clean laundry. The Ravens picked up the first down, ended up scoring, and their comeback was officially en route.

Fingers can be pointed at Derek Anderson for his horrible interception to Terrell Suggs, at Braylon Edwards for continuing to drop passes, at Kellen Winslow for playing and ostensibly (or coincidentally, depending on your view) continuing the Browns bad karma when he is on the field, and on and on. But at the end of the day, the Browns should have won this game should not have been made to look silly by Joe Flacco, Ray Rice, and Derrick Mason. Two rookies and a senior citizen made the “improved” Browns D look awful today. That’s just not acceptable, and not a good sign for a team still holding out hope for a late season rally.

Key #3: Romeo Crennel needs to be the man.

Nope. It didn’t happen. My original point in the preview was that Romeo and the coaches needed to figure out how to properly integrate Kellen Winslow back into the offense and locker room. Kellen actually made some good plays today, and finished with 5 catches for 64 yards. As harrowing as the “2-0 without him, 1-5 with him” stat is, I’m not sure there was anything that I saw specifically that says Kellen was the reason we lost today. I will say though that Derek Anderson looked much shakier in the first half than he did in the second half — but it’s hard not give the Ravens swarming D total credit for that. So I’ll give Romeo a pass on that one.

But as far as making adjustments, I think the Browns coaches get a big, fat F today. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Banging Jamal Lewis up the middle was not working. Do something different! Ray Rice is running all over you. Do something different! Your star wide receiver continues to drop catches that a star wide receiver should make. Get in his damn face and shock him back into focus! I just don’t get it. The offense is stagnating in the 2nd half. Give Jerome Harrison the ball in space. Find a creative way to get the ball to Joshua Cribbs. DO. SOMETHING. DIFFERENT.

I have been relatively supportive of Romeo Crennel and his coaching staff on this blog, giving them the benefit of the doubt in everything except clock management and their usage of Jerome Harrison. But after today’s game I don’t feel so generous. This was a game that the Browns should have and needed to win.

Let me address the play of Derek Anderson now. Some people have called me a Derek Anderson apologist and said that I overrate him. Maybe so, I don’t know. But Derek Anderson is not even among the top five reasons why the Browns lost today, and if you think switching to Brady Quinn would have made a difference – well I strongly disagree.

Derek Anderson got continuously hung out to dry in the 2nd half with no time to throw and horrible down and distance situations. Derek did not play great, but he certainly did not deserve the cascading of boos that showered him at the end of the game. I hope that more of those boos were for the coaches and Braylon than for Derek. Just imagine if Braylon had caught the deep pass in the 4th quarter or the potential first down near the sidelines. Derek’s game would have looked a lot better then. I actually think Derek Anderson played pretty damn well considering the fact that he had no running game, there were no adjustments to try to get a running game going, he constantly faced bad situations against an attacking defense, and the receiver he should trust the most is dropping the most important passes of the game.

Derek made some poor decisions today, namely puking the ball right into Terrell Suggs hands on the screen, but I think Jason Wright and the line should get a little blame there too. Either way, replacing Derek Anderson with Brady Quinn is not some magic elixir that will cure all that ails the Browns offense. Derek looked as frustrated as I’ve ever seen him towards the end of the game, and I don’t blame him at all.

I do want to end this recap on a positive note and offer one game ball for today. Not surprisingly, there is only one nominee: Joshua Cribbs. With the Browns inauspiciously down 10-0 in the first quarter, Joshua Cribbs took a Matt Stover kickoff to the house and reminded everyone why he was one of the five most valuable players on the team last season. He also averaged 13.7 yards on three punt returns. He provided a number of sparks when the Browns needed something good to happen. Unfortunately, none of the sparks amounted to anything except for the one that he finished himself.

So far this season, Joshua Cribbs has seemed like only a shell of the dominant return man that he was last year. Today, however, we saw the old Joshua Cribbs that is every bit as exciting and dangerous as Devin Hester. If…and it’s a big if…the Browns are going to finish 6-2 and give themselves a fighting chance for the playoffs at 9-7, they absolutely must have today’s Joshua Cribbs for the rest of the season. Our offense and defense are too inconsistent to count on either to step up on a game-in, game-out basis. We need our special teams to produce game-changing plays that keep us in every game. Joshua Cribbs held up his end of the bargain today, and did enough to produce a victory.

Unfortunately, the offense, defense, and coaching staff could not follow suit. Thus, the Cleveland Browns sit at 3-5 and even Mr. Browns Optimism (me) is struggling to find reasons why this team will be playing in the playoffs.

Today’s loss was undoubtedly the toughest and most crushing of the year. There is a chasm as wide as Shaun Rogers between 3-5 (with two losses to Baltimore) and 4-4 (tied with Baltimore, and potentially a game out of first if Pittsburgh loses). Somehow, the Browns have to find a way to cross that chasm if there is to be any more hope for 2008. It’s possible…but damn it’s hard to see right now how it’s even remotely probable.

[tags]cleveland browns, nfl, football, baltimore ravens[/tags]

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