Some more reaction to the Browns’ stunning come-from-ahead 24-20 road loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday evening:
*I was quite interested to hear Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski explain his thought process in making the choice to pass instead of run on the third-and-three play near the end of the game. The ball was intercepted, and it set up the Seahawks’ game-winning touchdown drive. He detailed, as I feared, a bunch of convoluted gobbledygook nonsense as his reasoning. The one and only choice was to run up the middle, which the Browns had done well all day, against a Seahawks defensive line that was tired and almost out of gas. And the person who should have carried the ball was Kareem Hunt, for whom Seattle had no answer. The Browns, leading 20-17, likely would have gashed the Seahawks and gotten the first down, and then some, which would have enabled them to just about run out the clock. And if they had failed to get the first down, then the Browns could have punted deep into Seattle territory and make the Seahawks offense, which hadn’t moved the ball since the middle of the first quarter, drive 60 yards to try a long game-tying field goal. Had the Browns still lost after doing all that, then it would have been much easier to swallow. Giving the gane away like they did is devastating, causing a negative feeling that could last into Sunday’s home game against the Arizona Cardinals. How hard is this to figure out? Stefanski, like other coaches throughout the NFL, works these ungodly hours preparing for games, and this is what he comes up with in the monent of truth? Really? Really?!!! You’ve got to be kidding me! Was he simply too tired — too sleep-deprived — to discern and apply common sense and basic intellect to the process? Apparently so. Up until then, he had coached a near-masterpiece, but after what happened, no one will remember that now. These games are almost always decided by players making good plays down the stretch and also, as it turns out, coaches making good decisions down the stretch. It’s no more complicated than that.
*Making matters even worse was the fact Browns called timeout to discuss the situation, and this is the play on which Stefanski doubled down? You have to have real questions about his judgment
*What does Stefanski say — what can he say? — to all his players and fellow coaches who worked so hard to get what would have been a monstrous win, only to have it ripped from their grasp by his egregious mistake?
*Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll had to have had some scary flashbacks as he watched Stefanski and the Browns lose the game on a terrible offensive call. In the Super Bowl following the 2014 season, the Seahawks, trailing 28-24 as time wound down in the fourth quarter, were running the ball down the New England Patriots’ throats with bruising back Marshawn Lynch. They were getting yardage in chunks as they got to the New England 1. A second straight Super Bowl title seemed firmly in grasp. Then, on the game’s final play, offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, for reasons still known only to him, called for a pass. Hearing the call in his headset, Carroll didn’t veto the play for some strange reason, and Russell Wilson’s fast ball on a quick slant was intercepted, allowing the stunned, gleeful and thankful Patriots to hold on for the win.
Steve King
