Browns 20 – Jets 13
CLEVELAND – The Jets said they expected this. The shame is that they didn’t perform as if they knew it was coming.
As expected, the Jets ran into a buzz saw in the angry Browns yesterday in hostile territory hard by the shores of Lake Erie.
As expected, the Browns hardly had the look of a 1-5 team.
And, as expected, the Browns rallied hard behind the controversial coaching change earlier in the week that sacked offensive coordinator Maurice Carthon and elevated Jeff Davidson to the role, looking spirited and together.
The result – Browns 20, Jets 13 – was an ugly one for the Jets, who watched the NFL’s worst offense mow them down as if they were loose chess pieces on a slippery board.
In a word, the Jets’ defense was close to pathetic for too much of the game, unable to slow down a Browns’ offense that had entered the game having scored a total of 88 points in six games before yesterday.
Through the first seven games of the season, the Jets had been feeding off the league’s weaklings, gathering all four of their wins against teams with losing records, losing their three games to teams with winning records.
Yesterday, they faced their third consecutive opponent with one win, but went home angry and disappointed at an opportunity gone awry.
Instead of heading into their bye week with a 5-3 record at the midway point, the Jets are 4-4.
It’s not as if the Jets didn’t have their chances. But Chad Pennington was simply not sharp, completing only 11-of-28 for 108 yards and two INTs.
Still, though, the Jets appeared to have a chance to tie the game in the final seconds when TE Chris Baker made a spectacular fourth-down one-handed catch in the end zone with 59 seconds remaining.
But he was knocked out of bounds while in the air by Browns safety Brodney Pool and the officials did not review the play.
The Browns looked as if they might blow out the Jets with an early flurry in the third quarter.
They took the opening drive of the second half and turned it into a 17-3 lead on a 30-yard Frye scoring pass to Kellen Winslow, who dusted Jets CB Justin Miller – who had been forced into the lineup because Andre Dyson hurt his right foot in the second quarter.
Then, after a Leon Washington fumble deep in Jets’ territory, the Browns got a 21-yard Phil Dawson FG out of it, good for a 20-3 lead with 3:48 remaining in the quarter.
But a 99-yard kickoff return by Miller energized the Jets and gave them some life. It cut the Browns’ lead to 20-13 with 3:35 remaining in the quarter.
It was Miller’s second KO return for a TD this season and the third of his two-year career.
The return seemed to inject life into the Jets’ defense, which had porous for most of the game.
The Jets held, got the ball back and the offense responded with a 47-yard Mike Nugent field goal that cut the Cleveland lead to 20-13 with 12:54 remaining in the game.
Earlier, the Jets took a 3-0 lead on a 27-yard Nugent field goal with 6:30 remaining in the first quarter.
It capped a mammoth 16-play, 83-yard opening drive that ate 8:30 off the clock, but it was a bit anticlimactic considering the good things the Jets did on the drive.
Pennington was 4-of-6 for 51 yards on the drive and connected with Laveranues Coles for 23 yards on one key third down and ran for six yards for a first down on another.
A Brad Smith keeper on third down that was stuffed by the Browns’ defense ended the drive and forced the Jets to settle for the three points.
The Browns, who entered the game with the last-ranked offense in the NFL, immediately responded to the Jets’ opening score with a field goal of their own – a 47-yard Phil Dawson kick – with 2:55 remaining in the first quarter.
The Browns came away a bit disappointed with the three points, too, considering the strong drive they engineered when their running back, Reuben Droughns, rushed 26 yards on four carries and began to exploit the Jets’ porous run defense.