Myles Garrett says ‘3 drives’ were the difference in 1st Browns-Ravens game
BEREA — The scoreboard said it wasn’t close the first time the Browns and Baltimore Ravens played this season.
All-Pro defensive end Myles Garrett, though, would like to lodge a mild dispute toward what the final score actually said.
“It’s a lot closer than — I hate saying this — but [what] the scoreboard says,” Garrett said Friday. “It’s not often that there are times that are like that, but we shut them down for most of the game. We let them have three drives and they made the most out of them.”
Mind you, the final score said the Ravens won 28-3. The halftime score said Baltimore led 21-3.
Garrett said there’s more than meets the eye to the final score. While he’s not disputing the Ravens win, he said there’s a world where the results on that Week 4 Sunday could’ve swung the Browns’ way.
“When you break down those three drives and you see the plays that they made on them, they’re blown coverages or people out of their position — and that’s all of us, it’s not just one person,” Garrett said. “We all came up short, whether it was physicality or execution, and we saw where we can improve, and I think we’ve covered up for that last week and we’re ready to make up for that blemish.”
Garrett’s theory can be put to the test Sunday, when the Browns (5-3) go to Baltimore to face the Ravens (7-2) in a rematch that could go a long way toward setting up Cleveland’s chance for division contention going forward.
A win and the Browns will put themselves within a half-game of the Ravens in the AFC North race. A loss and they fall two-and-a-half games behind Baltimore with the Ravens securing the head-to-head tiebreaker.
“You’ve got to have ‘em all,” Garrett said. “So to break that down, you’ve got to have the next one. It doesn’t matter who’s in the way. So right now with Baltimore,
we’ve got to take them out. It’s as simple as it is.”
That’s the simple part. Where it gets complicated is when the memories of the first meeting creep into one’s head.
Yes, there were extenuating circumstances that didn’t help the Browns’ cause.
The biggest of those was quarterback Deshaun Watson being ruled out hours before kickoff and rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson getting the start.
However, the Browns defense had its own struggles after having played at a historic rate over the first three games. It gave up touchdowns on all four Ravens red-zone possessions and allowed two lengthy scoring drives as part of a 296net yardage performance.
Now, just over a month later, the Browns defense gets a chance to rinse out the taste of that first matchup. To do that, it has to fix the things Garrett singled out as part of the reason the first game between the teams turned into the blowout.
How is it going to do that? Allow defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz to answer that one.
“I’ll leave that for the Ravens to figure out,” Schwartz said. “There’s no sense in me talking about what we did well, what we did poorly and what we’re changing.”