This Browns season long ago – perhaps right from the beginning, actually – turned into one of merely trying to gain little victories, whenever, wherever and however they can get them.
So with that having been said, then, I’m very happy – and borderline thrilled – with how the Browns performed in their come-from-ahead 38-24 loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday at Ford Field.
The Browns, jumping out to 10-0 lead in the first 4½ minutes with their best play of the season, fell to 0-9, but if they continue to perform like that, they will be exciting and fun to watch, and, more importantly. they’ll more than likely beat someone before the season is over.
As for the Lions, who won their second straight to improve to 5-4, they avoided what would have been a humiliating, season-destroying loss. But they got pushed around a lot by the Browns, who exposed the host team’s many weaknesses and might have won the game if they had done better – and been smarter in their play-calling and time management – in the red zone. Are you listening, Hue Jackson? You can’t just the blame for it in the post-game presser, even though that is noble and what a head coach – the leader of the team – must do. But you’ve got to change it, for this is hardly the first time that this has reared its ugly head and been a real issue.
If Detroit doesn’t play better – a whole heckuva lot better, actually – then it will have as much chance to make the playoffs this year as the Browns.
That would be zero.
However, this season has never been about winning necessarily, but rather about finding out if rookie DeShone Kizer is the franchise quarterback they need him – and desperately want him – to be. And from that standpoint, then, Kizer took a major step forward on Sunday, turning in the best outing of his short pro career by completing 21-of-37 passes for 232 yards and one touchdown with an interception that came in the browns’ last-chance drive in the game’s final moments.
He needs to do that again and again and again – consistency is always the key with these things — if he wants to be the guy for the Browns. Only time will tell on that. We’ll know a little more about him every week in this second half of the season – if he can stay healthy after getting knocked out of Sunday’s game temporarily with a hard shot to the ribs.
But this much I know – and I think we all know — about Kizer, and it is that, especially with the way he played against Detroit, he definitely has the toughness and courage to be the guy. And those are important – no, necessary – ingredients, to be sure.
