The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Kizer turns his best game into another disaster
Browns players in the home team’s locker room at FirstEnergy Stadium were as quiet as hushed mourners at another wake after the 27-21 overtime loss to the Packers on Dec. 10.
This loss was harder to swallow than most of the others because the Browns led, 21-7, in the fourth quarter. Then the entire team collapsed like a bridge made of toothpicks trying to support an 18-wheeler.
Rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer was playing his best game of the season until he was needed most. He threw a seasonhigh three touchdown passes in regulation, but then, on third-and-1 in overtime, he threw a pass a ninth-grade quarterback should never throw.
First, the pocket broke down. Then Kizer scrambled to his right. Then scrambled to his left, and with Clay Matthews right in front of him, Kizer threw a pass he thought would result in a touchdown if he could get it to Rashard Higgins.
“Yeah, I think you strike up the band there and enjoy our first win of the year,” Kizer said after the game.
Instead, Matthews hit Kizer’s arm as Kizer was falling backward. The ball popped up in the air and was intercepted at the Browns’ 42. From there, the Packers moved in for the winning touchdown on a 25-yard pass from Brett Hundley to Davante Adams.
“The play fell apart,” Coach Hue Jackson said. “Now it’s making the decision in the pocket that it’s kind of outside the pocket.
“You always have to be team-protecting unless it‘s obviously there because let’s go see if we can play defense and give ourselves another chance. I’ll take a look at it. I might feel differently after watching it. I think he was shocked that Matthews could get to him from where he was. He’s moving to his left. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably is not right.”
Kizer is maddening. Just when it seems he might be the quarterback to lead the Browns in the future, he does something to shatter that confidence and force new general manager John Dorsey to have no choice but to use his first pick in 2018, almost certainly the first pick of the draft, on a quarterback.
The loss to the Packers was not all on one silly throw by Kizer.
The Browns’ defense melted in crunch time again, as it has too often this season for defensive coordinator Gregg Williams to sit in the media room every Friday and boast how he had the right play called but someone screwed up. That is what he always does.
Special teams was awful in this one, too. The Packers got a first down off a fake punt in the first quarter leading to one touchdown and got a 65-yard punt return by Trevor Davis to the Browns’ 25 in the fourth quarter to set up the game-tying touchdown.
“Obviously, we can’t let that guy get out there,” Jackson said.
The Browns keep trying and work hard, as Jackson says without fail every Sunday. I am tired of hearing that tired line.
“Our guys — as I always say every week, it’s a broken record — they fight hard,” Jackson said again after loss No. 13. “They do a lot of good things, and we do things that don’t give us a chance to finish football games.”
Participation trophies don’t go to NFL players.