Monday’s ending went beyond what veteran offensive linemen Alex Mack and Joe Thomas envisioned as the worst-case scenario.
With the score tied, 27-27, and mere seconds remaining on the clock, Travis Coons lined up a potential game-winning field goal. A make sends Cleveland to its first win since Oct. 11. A miss sends the Ravens and Browns to their second overtime game of the season.
What happened wasn’t among the reasonably assumed possibilities.
Coons’ kick felt good, but he heard a second thump, and that’s never good. Brent Urban, in his Ravens debut, smacked the ball out of the air and Will Hill, the Ravens’ starting strong safety, scooped it up and ran down the sidelines for a game-ending, 64-yard touchdown.
“All I know is there’s never a good way to lose,” Thomas said, “but this is the worst way.”
The touchdown was the second special teams score the Browns surrendered in Monday’s 33-27 loss. The first came early on an 82-yard Kaelin Clay punt return. Sandwiched in between was a resilient Browns performance that included a gritty first half from Josh McCown, an improbable, Austin Davis-led comeback in the fourth quarter and a Tramon Williams interception to set up the final possession.
As he dressed in front of his locker, Mack acknowledged how tough the loss was to stomach, but it went far beyond the ending.
“You can look at that last field goal and point a finger there but there’s plays all over the film where offense, defense, special teams could have played a little better and gotten a couple more yards,” Mack said. “You can try to boil it down at the very end of the game but it takes a whole game in all three phases every week.”
Pettine and members of the offense lamented the potential yards that were lost because of a time crunch on the game’s final possession.
The Browns took over at Baltimore’s 48-yard line with 50 seconds to play after Williams’ interception and promptly moved 6 yards on a Brian Hartline reception across the middle. Cleveland didn’t run its next play, a 7-yard Davis scramble that ended with a slide in-bounds, until 18 seconds remained.
After a timeout, the Browns ran one more play, a Duke Johnson Jr. run for no gain, before Coons was summoned for the longest field goal attempt of his Cleveland career.
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