Cleveland Browns Lose Season Opener, Talking off the Ledge

I did a relatively crazy thing when I predicted in my season preview column Friday that the Cleveland Browns would start off the season 7-0.

That was bold, rash, irrational and probably a little dumb.

I still believe that the Browns have an as good, if not better football team than each of those opponents in the first seven games.

So I was obviously very, well, disappointed when the Browns laid a dud at home against the Cincinnati Bengals in the opener.

The easy thing to do would be walk off the ledge and call it quits with the Browns. Just decide the season is a loss and it's not worth getting excited about.

However, I'm not going to do that. So, consider this your therapy to keep you from doing anything rash like dressing in all black and walking across I-90 tonight.

Let's the get the obvious negatives out of the way first.

Penalties will kill football teams. Period. With 11 penalties for 72 yards it's going to difficult to beat anybody.

The offense needs to do a better job of finishing off drives with touchdowns. Leaving four points on the board after a trip inside the 10 is unacceptable.

The punting by Richmond McGee was underwhelming, constantly giving the Bengals good field position.

And it usually helps if you break the huddle on defense before the other team walks into the end zone for the go-ahead score. Head coach Pat Shurmur said in his post-game press conference that he thought the Bengals made a substitution before the play, and by rule the Browns should be afforded time to do the same, which they were not. We'll see if the NFL makes any sort of a ruling on whether or not the play was legal.

However, that play summed up the game as a whole: sloppy, confused and underwhelming.

A big part of the reason the Browns failed to execute at times (especially on offense at the end of the game) is because this is still a very young, inexperienced football team being led by a first-time head coach.

There's going to be an obvious learning curve.

When you look at the game as a whole—or even just the fourth quarter—the defense played very well. If the defense actually lined up on that play, A.J. Green never would have touched the ball. Joe Haden shut him down the whole game.

And maybe if Greg Little didn't run into Joshua Cribbs on that punt return, we'd be talking about an amazing run back for the win.

Football is so often a game of inches, bounces and breaks. They didn't fall in the Browns' favor on Sunday.

However, there were some good things.

I thought the defense played very well over the course of the game. Getting dealt terrible field position made it difficult but it held its own. Led by D'Qwell Jackson and Haden, the defense got stops when it needed them (except on that Cedric Benson fluke run at the end) and only yielded one real long drive for a touchdown. Every defense in the NFL would take that if you offered it every game.

He had some ups and downs, but I really like the poise Colt McCoy showed even when under pressure. His throws on the run were great. Things broke down really bad in the end—that's obvious—but that's what happens when you spot the other team 13 points and force your second-year quarterback with a young receiving corps to throw 40 times.

I don't think that was in Shurmur's plans going into the game.

I think if you play this game 10 times the Browns win at least seven or eight. While the loss to start the season stinks, it's just one game. I may have "predicted" the Browns could make the playoffs but I never believed that they were going to contend for a title this year at all.

This is still a team in flux. There will be growing pains.

To borrow from our favorite prodigal son, LeBron James, "We all know Rome wasn't built in one day."

The good news? If there was a team on opening day that looked worse it had to be the Peyton Manning-less Colts! They could only put up seven points against a Houston defense that couldn't stop even the most pedestrian attacks last year. Without Manning the Colts might be the worst team in the league.

I guess we'll see on Sunday.

Keep the faith.

Believeland!

You can follow me on Twitter @ClevelandFlack.