Monday leftovers

It’s only one game.

That appears to be the mantra the Browns will adopt as they lick their wounds before moving on to the second game on the schedule a week from tonight (Monday) on the road against the New York Jets.

The one game, of course, was the 43-13, didn’t-see-that-coming emasculation by the Tennessee Titans Sunday afternoon in the season opener. That is the approach coach Freddie Kitchens employed after the game.

“We lost our discipline and we lost our composure, but it is one game and we are going to be tested,“ he said. Isn’t that what the National Football League is all about? He continued, “You either take adversity and run toward each other or you run away.

“We have a bunch of guys who are going to run toward each other and we are going to be fine. It counts as only one game. The world is not ending today contrary to popular belief. (Oh brother.) Everyone in this locker room is going to keep believing.”

He then spread the blame. “I didn’t do a very good job of making sure we didn’t have penalties,” he said of the 182 yards doled out. “That’s just as much the coaches’ fault, my fault, players’ faults. Everybody takes some blame for that.” He didn’t go far enough.

I was hoping to hear the rookie head coach say all that and take full responsibility. “This one’s on me,” he should have said. Take the bullet. He did not. That’s too bad. Someone had to take the blame for what transpired against the Titans. Thinking about a buck and a desk right now.

In the NFL, the it’s-only-one-game excuse does not generally play well. Not with only 16 games on the schedule. Each game is golden. Each loss puts a team closer to not playing in January. And this team has definite designs on doing that.

Kitchens is trying his darnedest to make certain the stench from that loss lands quickly in the short-term memory bank for the 53 men he’s responsible for. The players should not be allowed to watch the tape from that fiasco, especially the offensive line.

You can be reasonably certain the setback did not sit well with the Haslams and General Manager John Dorsey, the latter in particular. Whether what happened Sunday was merely an aberration of the true potential of this team will be discovered soon enough.

You can also be reasonably certain Dorsey will chain himself to his desk and scour the waiver wire in an effort to (a) fix an offensive line that badly needs fixing, (b) locate the next placekicker for the Browns after rookie Austin Seibert missed an extra point Sunday and (c) try to calm down and not overreact.

Rarely does one loss have the kind of impact this one had. The media buildup no doubt had a lot to do with that.

It’s not out of the question to believe the outcome of the Jets game will go a long way in determining the direction this team takes this season. Teams that lose the first two games of a season have a 10.9% chance of qualifying for the postseason, according to the Web site Oddssharks.com.

So it is incumbent on Kitchens to get smart (smarter?) in a hurry because weeks three, four and five are a minefield (two night games on national television) and will arrive soon enough.

Baker Mayfield left the building Sunday with his right wrist wrapped in a bandage, the result of taking a frightful beating throughout most of the loss. He is the one player the club can ill afford to lose.

The quarterback goes down and fans might as well jump back off the bandwagon they hopped onto when the future looked exceedingly bright as recently as Sunday morning. And that’s why Dorsey has to quickly rectify an error in judgment with regard to his offensive line.

Second-guessing most likely is not part of Dorsey’s persona, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’s got to be wondering, especially after the Titans debacle, if trading guard Kevin Zeitler, the club’s best offensive lineman, to the New York Giants was a wise move.

He has been around long enough to know games are won and lost in the trenches, a fact that was brought home Sunday with how the trench warfare was so lopsided in favor of Tennessee.

Clearly in the nature of a second guess, this is something that should have been addressed in the college draft. Dorsey waited until the sixth round to select Drew Forbes, who has taken up residence on injured reserve.

Trent Williams of the Washington Redskins, one of the top offensive tackles in the NFL, has not reported. The Redskins refuse to trade him. A first-round draft pick or two might tempt them, something Dorsey would probably be reluctant to do.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. The Cleveland GM needs help right now. Williams would look awfully good at left tackle with Greg Robinson, ill-suited to play that position, moving over to the right side to push the awful Chris Hubbard to the bench.

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Another member of that Giants trade, defensive end Olivier Vernon, was ostensibly in the game Sunday. Played all 56 snaps. Why ostensibly? His name appears nowhere on the stats sheet. Hmmmm.

His linemates did well, though. Myles Garrett recorded two sacks, two quarterback hits and five tackles. Sheldon Richardson contributed four solo tackles. And Larry Ogunjobi chipped in with three solo tackles, a sack and a quarterback hit.

Cameron Wake, the old man of the Tennessee defense at 37, became personally acquainted with Mayfield on what seemed like every passing situation to the tune of three tackles, two-and-a-half sacks, two tackles for loss and four quarterback hits. He toyed with the Cleveland offensive tackles all afternoon.

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In case you’re wondering if the 18-penalty, 182-yard game against the Titans is a club record, it’s not. That one belongs to the 1951 Browns, who committed 21 penalties for 209 yards against the Chicago Bears in a 42-21 home victory on Nov. 25 that year.

That was also the game that saw Cleveland halfback – that’s what they were called in those days – Dub Jones score a still-record six touchdowns, four on the ground and a pair through the air. The father of quarterback Bert Jones caught nine passes for 116 yards and ran three times for 80. He scored on half of his touches.

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Denzel Ward had an afternoon he likely would like to forget in a hurry. The second-year cornerback from Nordonia was beaten twice by Titans rookie A. J. Brown, who caught three passes for 100 yards.

The first on the Titans’ opening drive saw Brown outrace Ward in tight coverage for a 47-yard gain. The second, early in the third quarter, saw Ward miss an open-field tackle at the Tennessee 38 that wound up as a 51-yard play. His lone statistical contribution was a hit on Marcus Mariota on a blitz, forcing the quarterback to throw the ball away.

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New Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. must have thought he was still back with the Giants, where losing is relatively common. Mayfield targeted him 11 times, completing seven for 71 yards.

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Reserve defensive lineman Devaroe Lawrence drew the oddest penalty of the game as time wound down in regulation. As the member of the extra-point defense team was jogging back to the bench following the placement after Malcolm Butler’s pick six, he appeared to say something to referee Brad Allen., who immediately flagged him for unsportsmanlike conduct. Sort of put a bow on the nightmare. Lawrence was reprimanded when he returned to the bench.

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Finally . . . Almost didn’t recognize Kitchens on the sideline with his clean-shaven look. Guessing his five-day growth, or longer, will return for the Jets game. . . . The Titans ran only 56 plays, 20 in Cleveland territory. . . . It sure looked as though defensive coordinator Steve Wilks went with a 4-2-5 look most of the game. His transition defense failed after two of Mayfield’s three interceptions. . . . Seibert’s missed extra point after the initial Browns touchdown probably puts him squarely back in Dorsey’s crosshairs. . . . Fellow rookie punter Jamie Gillan came through his first game unscathed. The Scottish Hammer (love typing that) landed three of his five punts inside the 20 and averaged 46.6 yards a boot.