Close doesn't win games

Judging by the final score, someone who did not watch Sunday’s Browns-Pittsburgh Steelers game might have thought it was not a close game.

The scoreboard read Pittsburgh 24, Cleveland 9, the loss extending the Browns’ interminably embarrassing losing streak to 11 games this season and 14 in a row overall, the Steelers snapping a four-game skid of their own.

It was, however, very much a game up for grabs with 9:45 left in regulation, the Browns scoring their only touchdown of the afternoon when Josh McCown hooked up with Gary Barnidge on a 14-yard scoring strike, creeping to within eight points of the Steelers at 17-9.

Despite an extra-point miss by Cody Parkey, it still remained a one-score game despite the Steelers overwhelming the Browns on sides of the ball for a major portion of the snowy Cleveland afternoon.

Consecutive three-and-outs by the Steelers’ offense following the Cleveland touchdown elicited hope among the Browns’ faithful. Was this the game the losing would cease? Against the dreaded and hated Steelers, no less?

So when the Cleveland offense returned to the field with 3:49 left and momentum generated by a defense that had struggled somewhat up to that point, hope had a chance to turning into reality. And then reality struck.

After all, these were the Cleveland Browns. The 0-10 Cleveland Browns. The team that always seems to get in the way of winning a football game, any football game at this point of the season; the team that seems to find new ways to lose. Let us keep everything here in perspective.

McCown, in the game because rookie quarterback Cody Kessler was concussed on the final play of the third quarter, began what fans hoped would be a drive that would at least tie the game with an incomplete pass from the Cleveland 13-yard line.

And then, sure as Sunday follows Saturday, disaster stuck. Pittsburgh linebacker Ryan Shazier strip-sacked McCown at the Cleveland 1 on the next play, the ball rolled into the end zone where rookie defensive tackle Javon Hargrave fell on it and cradled it.

The Steelers, who piled up yardage with ridiculous ease on offense and harassed Cleveland quarterbacks unmercifully throughout the game on defense, never got the ball back after that. They didn’t need to.

The Browns put together a 17-play drive that covered 61 yards – they had run only 45 plays that totaled just 148 yards until that point – and was moot in importance because time had expired and it died without the scoreboard changing.

The Steelers, who had only three first-half possessions, did just about everything right on offense except score touchdowns in the first 30 minutes. They marched methodically down the field against a Cleveland defense that had plenty of bend and practically no break.

They put together 16-play drives on their first two possessions totaling 150 yards and the best they could come up with was a pair of Chris Boswell field goals. The red zone was a dead zone due to a surprisingly sturdy Cleveland defense.

On his club’s third red-zone trip in the final minute of the half, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, clearly fed up with the lack of touchdowns, eschewed a third Boswell field goal with the ball at the Cleveland 3 and 10 seconds remaining with no timeouts.

He was determined to score more than three points, damn it, and right in front of the Dawg Pound, by this time throwing all kinds of objects onto the field. Despite his macho stance, Tomlin needed outside help from the officials.

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was more of a game manager than the mad bomber he has been against Cleveland in the past, twice tried to connect with Antonio Brown, his favorite receiver in the end zone. Both failed and both drew flags for holding and pass interference.

Because a half cannot end on a defensive penalty, the Steelers were rewarded with a pair of back-to-back untimed plays. Le’Veon Bell, who had run through and around the Cleveland defense all day, hammered the final yard on the second of those untimed downs. A successful two-point conversion gave the Steelers a 14-0 lead.

And then the Pittsburgh defense, which had limited the Browns to just 50 total yards in the first half with an assortment of blitzes that baffled Kessler and completely shut down the Cleveland running game, really took charge.

But stopping the Browns’ run offense is not really much of an accomplishment because that ground game has been idle for the last six games. Coach Hue Jackson might have to file a missing persons report in order to find the miscreants and correct an obvious weakness.

The offensive line once again was the chief culprit. Holes for the running backs were not there. Keeping the quarterbacks clean proved a mostly impossible task. The Steelers entered the game with only 13 sacks. They entered the locker room after the game with 21.

Kessler, seven-of-14 for 128 yards and only his second pick this season, was ineffective from the beginning. He had trouble identifying where the pressure was coming from and held on to the ball way, way, way too long.

The Pittsburgh pass rush sacked him four times, Steelers linebacker Lawrence Timmons dismissing him from the game with a vicious (and flagged) hit at the end of the third quarter.

The Browns’ offense ran much smoother, except for the strip sack, with McCown in charge of the huddle. But he, too, could not handle the extreme pressure and was dropped four times by a defense that reminded some of the old Steel Curtain seasons of the 1970s with its bellicose approach.

That they were in the game until the final five minutes, at least mathematically, suggests the Cleveland defense can be tough in the red zone. Making that even more significant is that defense was on the field for nearly 34 minutes and did not give up any easy points. The Steelers’ offense had to earn every one of those points.

The offense, on the other hand, is a huge problem and the fact the head coach is an offensive-minded guy with a reputation of fixing things should be troubling to those in charge in Berea.