Nearly three months after the Browns gave up on experimenting with Terrelle Pryor as a wide receiver, they’re turning to him again.
The Browns will re-sign Pryor, a league source confirmed for the Beacon Journal on Tuesday. They’re acquiring him as a receiver, not as a quarterback despite Josh McCown’s broken collarbone ending his season with five games left. That wouldn’t preclude Pryor from serving as an emergency third quarterback on game days. In his first tour with the Browns, the coaches made it known they considered him a candidate for the role.
Pryor tweeted a photograph of his son covered by a Browns blanket with the caption, “Just had my son in this blanket last night..... Glad to be back to Ohio !!”
The Browns have yet to announce the move. Pryor must pass a physical for a deal to be sealed.
“Nothing is official, so I don’t want to speak on that yet,” Browns coach Mike Pettine said Tuesday when asked about the move during a conference call.
Pryor generated plenty of headlines throughout training camp as he attempted to transition from quarterback to receiver while dealing with a nagging right hamstring injury. He made the 53-man roster, but the Browns cut him on Sept. 10, three days before their regular-season opener.
Pryor, 26, worked out for several teams but didn’t land elsewhere after the Browns waived him. The Browns filled his roster spot with running back Robert Turbin, who missed the first five games with a high-ankle sprain and was cut Nov. 10 after appearing in three games with the team.
The 6-foot-4, 223-pound Pryor starred at quarterback at Ohio State, then spent the first four seasons of his NFL career at the position. He decided to switch to receiver this past offseason after the Cincinnati Bengals cut him on June 18. The Browns claimed him four days later.
A hamstring injury suffered Aug. 4 was aggravated a couple of weeks later. It forced Pryor to miss most of training camp and three of four preseason games, but he pushed through some pain to play the second half of the exhibition finale.
In 15 snaps as a receiver, he wasn’t targeted. He took two shotgun snaps as a quarterback and ran for gains of 5 and 4 yards on read-option plays. He also served as the personal protector on the punt team for one play.
Pryor has yet to appear in an NFL regular-season game as a receiver. He spent three seasons with the Oakland Raiders at quarterback and went 3-6 as a starter in 2013, when Browns offensive coordinator John DeFilippo was his position coach.
NFL deems play clean
The Browns found yet another way to lose in heartbreaking fashion Monday night, and the NFL’s stance is the officials who worked the nationally televised prime-time game shouldn’t be blamed for the improbable finish.
On Tuesday, the league maintained the Baltimore Ravens should not have been penalized on the play resulting in defensive end Brent Urban’s blocked field goal and safety Will Hill’s game-winning, 64-yard return for a touchdown with no time left in a 33-27 defeat for the Browns.
On a replay posted to Twitter by SBNation.com, Ravens defensive back Anthony Levine appeared to have his right hand offside on the ground before the snap on the blocked field goal. If he was offside, the Ravens should have been penalized 5 yards, and the Browns should have received a chance to kick a 46-yard field goal after the botched 51-yard attempt by Travis Coons.
Dean Blandino, the NFL’s vide president of officiating, apparently doesn’t think a flag should have been thrown because he tweeted the following Tuesday: “On FG block last night the ball was spotted on the 33½-yard line. Video/pics going around have line drawn through 33.”
NFL spokesman Michael Signora elaborated in an email to the Beacon Journal.
“The ball was spotted at the 33-and-a-half yard line for the kick,” Signora said. “The center moves the ball up slightly to get in position for the snap. The black line you see, which television uses to denote the line of scrimmage, appears to be at the 33, not the 33-and-a-half. So when the ball is snapped, the defensive player is not at the 33-and-a-half yard-line and he appears to be in a legal position.”
Pettine said “from the coaches’ copy, there’s no indication” the Ravens were offside.
Also, a screen grab from ESPN’s telecast of Monday Night Football has circulated online and led to chatter on social media about whether Hill stepped out of bounds during his return for a touchdown. In one still frame, Hill’s left foot looks as if it could be out of bounds, but that doesn’t appear to be the case in a slow-motion replay from a different camera angle.
“Will Hill did not step out of bounds,” Signora told the Beacon Journal. “If he had, the game would have been stopped for an instant replay review. The touchdown was confirmed and as a result, there was no need to stop the game.”
Tough to swallow
Nevertheless, Pettine said it’s one of the toughest losses he’s ever endured.
“You’re poised for thrill of victory, and then you’re tasting agony and defeat, all within a span of 10-15 seconds,” he said. “I can’t imagine too many game-ending scenarios that would make you feel worse at the end than that.”
Pettine lamented Urban’s ability to knife between rookie first-round picks Danny Shelton and Cameron Erving and block the kick with his left hand.
“We weren’t firm enough on the left side,” Pettine said.
Pettine said Coons’ kick was “a little bit low,” but he conceded poor clock management played a part.
Instead of using one of their two remaining timeouts when wide receiver Brian Hartline caught a 6-yard pass with 44 seconds left, the Browns had issues with their headsets and let the clock run. Quarterback Austin Davis snapped the ball with 18 seconds left, ran for 7 yards, slid with 11 seconds left and Pettine called timeout with nine seconds remaining. Running back Duke Johnson was then stuffed for no gain, the Browns used their final timeout with three seconds left and lined up for the 51-yard field goal on second down.
“We needed to be much more efficient there,” Pettine said. “That is obviously the domino effect from that. We could have gotten another play or two and advanced the ball closer and the kick wouldn’t have been as low. It was a series that just led to the consequence of the field goal being blocked.
“Absolutely would have made the difference. That’s why these types of games stick with you for a long time, a lot of ‘what ifs.’”
Extra points
• Cornerback Justin Gilbert is in the NFL’s concussion protocol, Pettine said. He suffered a concussion while returning a kickoff in the third quarter against the Ravens.
• Cornerback Pierre Desir was a healthy scratch Monday, Pettine said. Gilbert started in place of Joe Haden, who has missed the past three games with a concussion, instead of Desir.
• Pettine said the coaches discussed going for two points after wide receiver Travis Benjamin caught a 42-yard touchdown pass from Davis to trim the Browns’ deficit to 27-26 with 1:47 left. Instead, they tied the score with an extra-point kick. “If we had scored and it was under 30 seconds left and not a chance to get another possession, then our mindset there was we felt we had two 2-point plays that we had worked all week that we felt really good about based on the projected look we thought we might get,” Pettine said. “That was the mindset but because we scored and had our timeouts and had a chance to get the ball back again, then we obviously went with the decision to kick it.”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.