For the past several years, Time Warner sportstalk host Les Levine has offered his skills as a time manager to the Cleveland Browns. Hopefully today, GM Phil Savage will place a call to Levine and give him the gig. because a contributing factor to last nights’ 10-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers was the horrible use of the clock by the coaching staff. This problem, and the Browns habit of picking up stupid penalties have the squad sitting at 0-2 as they head to the road for two straight contests.
The handling of the clock at the end of the first half was abysmal to be kind. After completing a pass to set up a third down and 1 at the Pittsburgh 12 yard line, the Browns should have used their last timeout of the half. At that point, Derek Anderson should have gone to the end zone with a pass, and even if it failed the Browns would have been staring at a 29 yard field goal to cut the halftime deficit to 7-3. Instead, Anderson raced the offense to the line of scrimmage and successfully converted a quarterback sneak. The down side was it left Cleveland just 8 seconds remaining.
Then, DA compounded his error by throwing a short pass (which would have required a run by the intended target into the end zone) which was picked off by Troy Polamalu. Thus, the Browns, who could have had at least three points with good clock management, scored none.
I have no problem with the field goal with three and a half minutes remaining in the game to make the score 10-6, with the proper first half clock management, the score should have been 10-9, but if Crennel had gone for the first down and failed, or the Browns had tied the game at 10, the defense still would have needed the stop the Steelers to have a chance to win the game. However, clock management was the issue again.
Crennel called his first time out with 3:16 remaining, had he saved it, the Steelers would have likely run the clock down to 2:40 before running another play. Of course, the next play was the 19 yard pass to Heath Miller which advanced the ball to the 50 yard line, a play that took 19 seconds, which would have put the time at around 2:20 remaining. Willie Parker ran for four yards which would have brought the game to the two minute warning, but the Browns still would have had three timeouts left, and likely would have got the ball back with about 1:30 left instead of :26.
Besides the clock gaffe, how many penalties did the team get for lining up in the neutral zone? How many passes did Braylon Edwards drop? I believe it was two, which brings his total to six for the season. Perhaps he is trying to drop two balls for every gold medal won by his friend, Michael Phelps.
The Browns did stay consistent with the running game, trying to get Jamal Lewis going, but they did get predictable on the fourth quarter drive, running Lewis on first down three times on the scoring drive in the fourth quarter. Also, I agree with Kellen Winslow in wondering why he wasn’t on the field for the last :26, seeing that he is the team’s best offensive player.
On defense, Shaun Rogers was a man once again. My favorite play was him driving Parker into the ground for a loss in the second quarter. The team did get three sacks, but they lacked aggressiveness when they had the Steelers pinned back inside the five yard line, rushing just four on a 2nd and 8 from the Pittsburgh 3 yard line which resulted in a 33 yard pass to Hines Ward which changed the field position.
The Cleveland Browns now have a must win on the road next week against Baltimore. They are a better team, but they must eliminate the dumb penalties, dropped passes, and put pressure on a rookie QB in Joe Flacco. If they lose to the Ravens, who are coming off an unscheduled bye week due to Hurricane Ike, their season is over before it started. Then, they will have nothing but time to think about how they could have handled the clock better against Pittsburgh.
JD
Cleveland Sports Perspective 