Nick Chubb had 124 of the Cleveland Browns' 215 yards rushing in their 35-30 win over the Cincinnati ... [+]
It was the game Kevin Stefanski needed, the game Baker Mayfield needed, the game Odell Beckham needed, and, most important of all, the game their fans needed.
Thursday night the Cleveland Browns played it.
No, it wasn’t a 60-minure masterpiece. They gave up 30 points to what was the worst team in the NFL last year. They were flagged for eight penalties and 76 yards, and Mayfield uncorked another one of his forehead-slapping interceptions – but only one.
Overall, however, just four days after a harrowing season-opening 38-6 pancaking at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens that was so chaotically one-sided that some feared Cleveland was in danger of a return trip down Freddie Kitchens Boulevard, the Browns rebounded and played the game they, and their Dawg Pound, needed to see.
In a game between two teams that both viewed the other as beatable, the Browns beat the Cincinnati Bengals 35-30 Thursday night for win No. 1 in the Stefanski Era.
“It’s football,” said the rookie coach. “These games are hard. You have to take each game as a one-week season. You can’t look behind and you can’t look ahead. We don’t ride the wave.”
Stefanski and his team have had an eye-opening two-game orientation to start the 2020 season. Their first game was against the team with the best record in the NFL last year. Their second game was against the team with the worst record in the NFL last year. That the two games took place in the span of five days only added to the drama.
Or, for Browns’ fans, to the angst.
A loss at home to the lowly Bengals Thursday, after getting blasted by the Ravens on Sunday, would have triggered another full-blown Code Red within a fan base carrying more scar tissue than any fan base in the league.
Instead, the victory assuaged those wounds, and gave Stefanski instant credibility, after his disastrous debut 120 hours earlier in Baltimore.
“The bottom line is there is a lot to clean up in a win and in a loss,” Stefanski said. “We need to make sure that we identify and correct, and then just get one game better each week.”
This would have been a challenging first two games for any team, for any veteran coach. That it was the Browns, led by still another first-year coach, raised the stakes even more. The longer the team went without a win, the more the team would be haunted by its dismal history, of having reached the playoffs just once in this century, while being only four years removed from back-to-back seasons of 1-15 and 0-16.
So yes. Urgency reigns in Cleveland.
Thursday night offered a welcome elixir for all the heartburn.
It wasn’t just that the Browns won. It was how they won. They won by using a blueprint that was missing in Baltimore. They won by pounding the ball on the ground, with their two indefatigable ball carriers, Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt, which helped open up some passing lanes for Mayfield, whose hot and cold first two years in the league makes this, his third season, the critical swing vote, a referendum, on his future with the franchise.
“Those guys are really special,” said Mayfield, of the firm of Chubb & Hunt. “This shows what we’re capable of when we get those two guys going.”
Those two guys got going early in Thursday’s game, and the Bengals were unable to stop them. Chubb carried the ball 22 times, for 124 yards, 5.6 yards per carry, and two touchdowns. Hunt had 10 carries for 86 yards, an average of 8.6 per carry, and one touchdown.
“Obviously, those are two talented backs,” Stefanski said. “They complement each other, and they push each other. We are going to always look for unique ways to get them the rock.”
The Browns’ unstoppable running game, augmented by play-calling that emphasized Mayfield rolling out to either side, helped open the passing game that was stagnant in the Baltimore game. It also quieted, at a least for a week, the cottage industry of critiques in Cleveland over the lack of chemistry between Mayfield and the high-maintenance Beckham.
Beckham caught four balls for 74 yards, including a 43-yard touchdown pass. Mayfield completed 16 of 23 passes for 219 yards, with two touchdowns and one interception. His dismal quarterback rating of 65 in the 38-6 loss to the Ravens jumped to 110.6 in the win over the Bengals.
“You always want to put the ball in your playmakers’ hands early, so your opponent has to think about it. That’s my job. Get the ball in their hands,” Mayfield said.
“We want to keep growing as an offense,” Stefanski said. “I hope this is not the ceiling. We have to get better offensively, defensively and special teams. We have to get incrementally better each week.”
This week, the Browns did.
