Jim Donovan was right - Browns Daily Dose

Jim Donovan was right…once again

By STEVE KING

FINAL. pic.twitter.com/Anc7bz1dpY
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) October 17, 2021

Jim Donovan, the longtime Browns radio play-by-play voice and the longtime sports director at Cleveland’s NBC affiliate, WKYC (Channel 3), knows the Browns better than anybody outside of the team’s locker room.

He knows where they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going. So, then, when he talks, I listen — intently.

As such, when he texted me, “They’re devastated,” shortly after the Browns lost a 47-42 heartbreaker to the Los Angeles Chargers last Sunday on the road, I put that into my memory bank.

Yes, I bet they were devastated. They were ahead 27-13 in the second half and getting ready to put the game away before it got away from them.

Sure enough, as Donovan seemed to intimate, that dejected, downcast feeling never went away. It carried over into Sunday’s home game against the Arizona Cardinals and apparently was the reason the Browns came out flat — as flat as a pancake. In fact, it’s been a long time — perhaps forever — since I’ve seen the Browns be so flat, so unenthused, so lacking in focus and purpose, at home. They fell behind 20-0 and never really got their feet underneath them, losing 37-14.

Penalties, penalties and more penalties, six in a veritable blink of an eye.

Overthrows, underthrows and no throws when there could have been for gains.

Ball insecurity, if you the drift.

And missed coverages in the secondary, again, for the second straight week, enough to choke an elephant.

It was embarrassing, humiliating, and so they were embarrassed and humiliated before a raucous, full-house home crowd that did its darnedest to get the Browns into the game, and keep them there. It didn’t work.

And that’s not good.

That’s a disservice to your home fans. They did their job, and so the Browns are expected to do theirs. That they did not is unacceptable.

There are only so many games — so many chances — in a season, 17 of them, to be specific, and the Browns just wasted one by not being ready to play, by letting what happened last week become an uninvited and unwanted guest by staying a while longer.