Finish the job.
Finish the job.
Finish the job.
For goodness sake, finish the job!!
That’s the message — the main message, really — for the Browns this week as they get ready to face the host Houston Texans on Saturday in the wild-card round of the AFC playoffs.
In their only two previous trips to the postseason in this expansion era, the Browns didn’t finish the job, and it cost them dearly.
On Jan. 17, 2022 at Kansas City in the 2020 divisional round, the Browns had the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs right where they wanted them and couldn’t finish the deal. Trailing 19-3 at halftime and seemingly on the brink of being out of the game, the Browns put together a nice comeback to cut the margin to 22-17 on Kareem Hunt’s four-yard touchdown run with 11:07 left in the fourth quarter. On top of that, Patrick Mahomes got knocked out of the game with an ankle injury, forcing the Chiefs to go with veteran joyrneyman Chad Henne.
Indeed, then, the Chiefs were ripe for the taking. A huge upset and a trip to the AFC Championship Game was right there for the Browns, and they couldn’t make that next step to score another TD and take the lead.
Henne snuffed out the Browns’ last hopes by scrambling for a first down on third and 12 at midfield, and they never got the ball back in a 22-17 loss.
On Jan. 5, 2003 in the 2002 wild-card round, the Browns went to Heinz Field and stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers by going on top 24-7 on Kelly Holcomb’s 15-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Dennis Northcutt with 12:11 left in the third quarter. The game seemed to over. Browns wideout Kevin Johnson said afterward that a Steelers defensive back at that point wished him and the Browns good luck the following week at Oakland, where, with a win, would have been headed to meet the Raiders in a divisional round game.
But the Browns were unable to close it out, allowing another journeyman quarterback, Tommy Maddox, to begin performing like Terry Bradshaw and lead an incredible comeback for a 36-33 win.
But more than the play of the Steelers, really, it was their own efforts — or lack thereof, as it were — that hurt the Browns the most. They let victory slip through their fingers, literally and figuratively. They developed a case of the dropsies, failing to seal the deal two different times in the fourth quarter, first when safety Robert Griffith dropped a sure interception, and then when wideout Dennis Northcutt, who had a knack for catching everything thrown to him, no matter where the ball was, was unable to hold on to a pass right in his hinds on a third-down play. He was wide open near the Pittsburgh bench. There was no one within a 15-yard radius of him. Had he caught the ball, he might still be running.
Afterward in the Browns dressing room, middle linebacker Earl Holmes, a former Steeler, sat on a chair in front of his locker and shook his head.
“Man, we sure blew that, didn’t we?,” he asked of outside linebacker Darren Hambrick sitting a few feet away.
“Yup,” came the reply.
All these years later, the Browns can’t afford to blow it again.
Steve King
