A MISTAKE MO MORE
Cleveland shows how far it’s come in win over rival Steelers
Fireworks lit up the Cleveland sky late Sunday night after the Browns won their first playoff game since 1994 under unprecedented and impossible circumstances. Browns first-year head coach Kevin Stefanski was sitting quarantined in his house due to a positive COVID-19 test, unable to communicate with his team, replaced on the sideline by special teams coach Mike Priefer.
The Browns had practiced only once all week on Friday due to the league’s protocols to guard against a virus outbreak.
They had lost 17 straight games at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field dating back to 2003. They hadn’t been in the playoffs since 2002.
They hadn’t won in the postseason since before the franchise’s 1999 restart, four years after Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore, leaving Cleveland without a pro football team for three seasons.
But a record 28-point first quarter catapulted Cleveland to a 48-37 victory over the Steelers, and now the six-seed Browns are on to face the reigning Super Bowl champions: Patrick Mahomes and the AFC’s top-seed Kansas City Chiefs.
“I want to congratulate our fans,” Priefer, 54, a Cleveland native, said after the win. “I grew up one of them. I know what it means.”
Even with Stefanski helping to prepare the team remotely through Zoom during the week, the Browns had plenty to overcome once they reached the field.
Three-time Pro Bowl left guard Joel Bitonio was also sidelined due to a positive COVID-19 test. Starting right tackle Jack Conklin went down with an ankle injury in the first half.
Undrafted and former AAF/XFL guard Michael Dunn made his first career start in Bitonio’s place and played extremely well. Then when Dunn got hurt in the second half, a recent signing off the Jets’ practice squad named Blake Hance stepped in.
How new was Hance to the team? “Michael got hurt and a guy named Blake that I introduced myself to literally in the locker room before the game stepped up in the fourth quarter,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said.
The wisdom of the NFL’s decision to press through this pandemic with no bubble, leading to health risks and competitive imbalance, will warrant debate long into the future.
Interestingly, though, the Browns weren’t the team that looked like they hadn’t practiced most of the week.
Mike Tomlin’s Steelers were an absolute train wreck, concluding a season they had started 11-0 by losing five of their final six games. The Browns defense scored a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage.
Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey sent Pittsburgh’s first shotgun over Ben Roethlisberger’s head. Then, after the quarterback didn’t even bend down to pick the ball up — and running back James Conner’s attempt failed, too — Browns safety Karl Joseph dove on it in the end zone.
Roethlisberger threw four interceptions, including three in the first half, and the rout was on.
Pittsburgh’s first quarter drives ended: fumble, interception, three-and-out punt, interception.
Mayfield’s 40-yard TD pass to Jarvis Landry, and two Kareem Hunt TD runs, gave the Browns the most first quarter points by one team in any playoff game since the 1970 NFLAFL merger.
Tomlin must own one of the worst coaching jobs of his career.
First, he rested several Steelers starters in a Week 17 loss to the Browns that let Cleveland into the playoffs. Then his team wasn’t ready to play in a playoff game.
Then Tomlin unforgivably punted on two controversial fourth downs in Sunday night’s loss.
First, he punted on 4th and 9 from the Browns’ 38-yard line while trailing, 28-0, early in the second quarter. Then he punted on 4th and 1 from the Steelers’ 46-yard line while down, 35-23, early in the fourth.
“We had some stops, wanted to pin them down, maybe provide the short field for our offense,” Tomlin said of the fourth quarter punt. “We had maybe two or three consecutive stops (prior to that). I just wanted to keep the momentum going in terms of field positioning. But we weren’t good enough in terms of doing that.”
Roethlisberger finished with 501 passing yards and four touchdowns, but his four turnovers and atrocious first half play left the two-time Super Bowl winner sitting and staring on the bench after the loss.
Roethlisberger, 38, knows the end is near. But he also carries a $41.25 million cap charge in 2021, the final year of his contract, which will become a $22.25 million dead cap hit if the Steelers move on.
Pittsburgh never was the same team once edge rusher Bud Dupree tore his ACL and went down for the season, following inside linebacker Devin Bush’s season-ending ACL tear earlier in the fall. This was still a sorry whimper of an end to a season that leaves a lot of question marks in the Steel City.
That’s not the Browns’ problem, though. They’re on to Kansas City with Stefanski and Bitonio back, plus the knowledge that they are ready for anything.
Literally, anything.