Cleveland Browns play complementary football to win key AFC North game
CLEVELAND — Reggie Ragland was sitting two lockers down from Cade York as the Browns rookie kicker was being asked about his two fourth-quarter misses in Saturday’s win over Baltimore.
Finally, after about three questions to York about why the misses happened, the veteran linebacker spoke up.
“S*** happens,” Ragland said to no one in particular. “He good.”
Later, as York was walking away from his locker, Ragland made a point to stop him. It was just a quick interaction, a quick, “Keep your head up, man.”
For Ragland, there was a bigger-picture purpose behind the words of encouragement.
“Yeah, he missed it, but look what the defense did, man,” Ragland told the Beacon Journal. “That’s why it’s a team game, man. All them got up on him for no reason. Yeah, he missed it. So what? Man, it’s a team game. That’s why you gotta hold each other accountable. Offense ain’t scored that much tonight. It was just defense time to play ball tonight.”
York, for the record, was also the reason why the Browns owned a 6-3 halftime lead over the Ravens. Although he missed two kicks in the swirling snow of the fourth quarter, he also knocked through a 47-yard field goal in the second quarter, one of his two first-half kicks.
It wasn’t just about York, though. To Ragland, what Saturday’s win over Baltimore showed is a blueprint that good teams followed religiously.
One aspect may not be on point on a given day. That doesn’t mean the whole thing falls apart.
“Complementary,” Ragland said. “That’s exactly what it is. A complementary complimentary game, man. When offense’s not doing good, defense gotta step up, then special teams gotta step up, which happened. It’s a team game, man. That’s why you can’t get down like that, man. Stuff happens. It’s a part of the game.”
It wasn’t just a couple of special-teams misses, though. Although the offense looked as sharp as it has in Deshaun Watson’s three games at quarterback, that’s still grading on a significant curve.
Watson was just 18-of-28 passing for 161 yards with a third-quarter touchdown pass to Donovan Peoples-Jones. That remains, though, just the second offensive touchdown in three games for the Browns with Watson behind center.
Yet, despite that, the Browns have won two of the three games Watson has started since returning from an 11-game suspension.
“I think it’s just impressive to see this team’s resilience,” right tackle Jack Conklin told the Beacon Journal. “Dropping the game last week, a lot of teams would just quit with four games left and kind of things looking bleak. But for this team, we just keep on fighting, and it’s impressive to see what all these guys are doing, buying in and fighting on.”
That’s partially because of a defense that has had to fight on through a litany of injuries throughout the season. It hasn’t just been those injuries that have led to many of the issues on that side of the ball over the first three months of the season.
However, the injuries that have decimated the linebacking corps and impacted both the defensive line and secondary at other times certainly could’ve been an excuse. Instead, the Browns stonewalled a Ravens team — admittedly without star quarterback Lamar Jackson — that came into the game tied atop the AFC North.
“We’re professionals, we have to,” said Ragland, who played two defensive snaps in his Browns debut Saturday. “Next man up. I hate the fact that guys are going down, but like this next man up. Everybody over here professional. Everybody do their job, man. And when you don’t do your job, you gotta let it be known. But most part, man, we got professionals and guys are doing their job.”
That complementary style goes even within phases of the game. The Browns came into Saturday’s game knowing that Tyler Huntley, while in no way Jackson, was still a very dangerous passer and runner.
A year ago, Huntley threw for 270 yards and ran for another 45 in Cleveland when he came in to replace an injured Jackson. So the Browns were cognizant of what he was capable of doing.
But that wasn’t what Huntley did on Saturday. He threw for just 138 yards, completing 17 of 30 passes, and ran for 15 yards.
The Browns managed to sack Huntley three times. At least two of those were due to strong coverage by the secondary forcing him to hold onto the ball.
“The guys up front are always working,” safety Ronnie Harrison Jr. said. “We try to do our job in the back end to make it easier for them. So if we can lock those guys down, it gives Myles and those guys up front more time to get there. So we’re just trying to make it all blend, you know what I’m saying? And then we did that today.”
Contact Chris at [email protected].
On Twitter: @ceasterlingABJ
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