The Cleveland Browns were facing a fourth-and-9 opportunity in the fourth quarter on Sunday with a chance to take the lead late and decided to go with a draw play by handing the ball off to running back Nick Chubb.
Chubb was stuffed for a gain of only two yards, which was not good enough to convert on fourth down.
When a team has the ball on the opposition’s 40-yard line late in the game and holds a chance to take the lead, this is a golden opportunity for a squad looking to get off to a good start on the year. Consequently, when the Browns couldn’t convert the fourth-down attempt, people naturally looked for someone to blame.
However, starting quarterback Baker Mayfield refused to let the blame lie with the play that was called or the coaching staff.
“I know what you guys are gonna try and do is talk about the playcalling,” Mayfield said. “But you know what, that’s why I said execution’s the most important thing. Whatever we have called, we have to do our job.”
On the other hand, Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens did not fault his offense. Kitchens opted instead to admit that in hindsight, the draw play was a “bad call.”
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Even after that, the Browns had a chance to send the game into overtime after driving the ball down to the Rams’ 4-yard line. After three straight incompletions, however, Mayfield’s desperation toss into the endzone was intercepted to seal the win for the Rams.
Following that stalled drive, Kitchens was again questioned as to why he didn’t attempt to run the ball with Chubb as his team still had three timeouts left.
Kitchens stood up to reporters, weathered the storm and took responsibility as the leaders of the Browns.
“I gotta do a better job during the course of the week, putting these guys in better situations and then on game day,” the coach said. “So, if you’re looking to blame somebody, blame me. Don’t blame any of our players; don’t blame any of our other coaches — just blame me, because I can take it.
“Go write your article and say I messed the game up. Go write your article and say it’s my fault things [are] not looking like it did last year. Because it is,” Kitchens added.
With the loss, the Browns dropped to 1-2 on the year and will have some work to do to get back to the form they were in during last season’s winning surge.
