NEW ORLEANS — If the Cleveland Browns were scrappy underdogs or a young team working toward a brighter future, being tied in the fourth quarter before hitting a wall on their way to losing by three touchdowns might be seen as a teaching point.
But it’s not, and the Browns aren’t that. These Browns have long been a sunken ship. They ran up a bunch of yards and created big plays Sunday to put themselves in position to open the back portion of their season with at least a little jolt, but the New Orleans Saints made more big plays — and kept making them — to eventually turn a strange, wild game into a 35-14 win.
Cleveland got blown out, and blown coverages were again part of the story. The familiar tackling problems were also back in a big way. The Browns found a way to turn Saints super-utility man Taysom Hill into a modern version of Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson. Hill ran for more yards in the fourth quarter (122) than the Browns have in any of their last eight games. He scored two of the three fourth-quarter touchdowns that turned a tied game into a runaway victory that sent Cleveland to 2-8.
A @Saints TD on 4th and 1 for Taysom Hill!
📺: #CLEvsNO on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/A5vC2B4joB— NFL (@NFL) November 17, 2024
If the Browns’ defense tackled like it danced to celebrate pass breakups, it might be the 1985 Chicago Bears. Instead, it’s a unit that gave up 8.5 yards per play ahead of the Saints’ game-ending kneeldowns.
This isn’t new. Not the losing, not the missed tackles and kicks, not the penchant for giving up big plays or squandering scoring opportunities. The season has been over for a long time because the Browns couldn’t throw or score until Jameis Winston became their quarterback (for now) in Week 8. But Winston threw it pretty well Sunday in his New Orleans homecoming, and he importantly avoided throwing interceptions.
So while this long road to an uncertain future started nearly two months ago, it was reasonable to think that an experienced defense off its bye week would deliver, and that the Browns could win if Winston took care of the ball and threw it confidently. The Saints are so bad that they fired their coach two weeks ago.
That thought, like most Cleveland’s front office had in constructing this all-in roster, was wrong. Winston threw for 395 yards and a pair of highlight-reel touchdowns, an 89-yarder to Jerry Jeudy and a 30-yarder to Elijah Moore. Competent quarterback play has made the receiving corps look much better than it previously did, but other positives are hard to find.
JEUDY 89-YARD TD!! 😳
📺: #CLEvsNO on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/pPwT9dYWZs— NFL (@NFL) November 17, 2024
The Browns still aren’t scoring. They’ve topped 17 points just once since Week 2. They had 254 yards in the first half Sunday but just six points because Dustin Hopkins missed two field goals. He actually missed three — a penalty negated another. Then three snaps after missing from 32 yards, he missed from 27 yards. Entering Sunday, NFL kickers were 99-of-100 from 27 yards or shorter this season.
Jeudy and Winston executed the scramble drill to perfection in besting the Browns’ previous long pass play of the season by 51 yards, and Moore left his feet to secure a ball not many would have caught in the third quarter. But outside those plays, the 2015-2017 Browns seem enjoyable compared to this current version.
This Cleveland team is the most expensive in NFL history, but it’s not well-built or well-coached. And every time Hopkins misses or Juan Thornhill is on the opposite hashmark while an opposing runner is on the numbers headed to scoring territory, everyone watching is reminded of the contracts the Browns have handed out and pushed forward in the last two offseasons.
The offensive tackle situation has been a mess since the summer, and it got messier Sunday when young left tackle Dawand Jones was lost for the season to what’s believed to be a fracture in his lower leg. That means Jedrick Wills Jr., who hasn’t been fully healthy in more than a year and was a late scratch ahead of this game, may or may not be healthy enough to play Thursday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wills doesn’t have a contract for next year, but the Browns have a dead cap charge of $11.8 million for Wills in 2025 if he isn’t on the team.
Right now, the two-win Browns don’t have a No. 1 left tackle, No. 1 running back or No. 1 wide receiver under contract for next year. And they don’t have a quarterback, either. But they still have two fully guaranteed years of Deshaun Watson’s contract on their books and potentially cap charges past those two years, depending on how they proceed with Watson. So it’s easy to see Hill or Marquez Valdes-Scantling running up the Superdome sideline with no orange helmet in position to stop them and see that as a symbol of the whole thing getting away from this Browns team.
It’s not January yet. It’s hard to imagine anything but major restructuring of the folks in charge and multiple levels of the roster given how this has been going. The Browns’ last two messaging points to their fans were a bye week news conference during which general manager Andrew Berry didn’t really answer any questions, and then Sunday’s defensive debacle, which was different from the Browns’ previous game on Nov. 3 in that Los Angeles Chargers wide receivers just generally went uncovered and the Saints’ pass catchers mostly got their yards after the catch.
Thousands of Steelers fans waving yellow towels in Cleveland on Thursday night won’t be good for the optics, either.
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.
Sign Up
The truth comes out on Sundays (and occasionally Thursdays), and when bad decisions at key positions compound, there’s no running from it. The Browns are one of the worst and oldest teams in the league. That’s not the combination anybody wants, obviously, but it’s the current reality. There are still seven games for evaluation and for players to make impressions. There are potential jobs across the depth chart to be won for future years. But the Browns’ fourth-quarter fizzle reinforced what’s long been in front of all involved, specifically those who signed off on the construction of this team. The failures are everywhere.
How do you throw for 395 yards without an interception and lose by 21 points? How do you miss those kicks, those tackles and those tight ends running free across the middle in high-leverage moments?
It’s not all that different than asking how Kevin Stefanski could sit there in October and say with a straight face that Watson gave the Browns the best chance to win, or now when he says the Browns will keep coaching their players and focusing on improvement. It’s just broken: deeply, expensively and maddeningly.
(Photo: Stephen Lew / Imagn Images)
