Cleveland: The New England Patriots — with the support of enough fans to make it seem as if they were playing a home game — came into FirstEnergy Stadium Sunday and stopped the Browns’ running game in its tracks.
That was no small feat considering the Browns entered the game with the No. 1 rushing attack in the NFL, averaging 149.2 yards per game behind the NFL’s No. 2 rusher, Isaiah Crowell, who until Sunday had rushed for 394 yards and three scores on 61 carries for 6.5 yards per attempt.
And the Patriots knew all of that.
“You have to give credit to them. They have done a great job running the ball this year,” Patriots defensive end Rob Ninkovich said.
For one game, however, the Browns did not. Their rushing attack ran up against a significant roadblock in the Patriots defense.
How much of a roadblock? The Patriots held the Browns to 27 yards on 22 carries for a 1.2 yards per carry. Any time Crowell looked for a crease in one of his 13 attempts, he only found a defender. He finished Sunday’s 33-13 loss with 22 of those yards for 1.7 yards per attempt.
“They came out with kind of a 6-1 look on us, kind of a blanket front, took away some of our double teams,” guard Joel Bitonio said. “They did a good job. They outplayed us today in the run game for sure. It’s unfortunate because we wanted to run the ball, but they did a good job stopping it.”
Given the prowess of Patriots coach Bill Belichick, the Browns expected the Patriots’ defense to attack their strength.
“Because when you have success in the run,” guard John Greco said, “teams are going to hone in on that and try to do everything they can to stop you, and that’s the Patriots’ M.O. Today we just didn’t execute. They got us.”
The inability to move the ball on the ground hurt the Browns in more ways than one.
It forced the Browns into a pass-first mentality as the Patriots, with star quarterback Tom Brady returning after a four-game Deflategate suspension, methodically built a 23-7 halftime lead. By then the feeling that Brady — who went 28-of-40 for 406 yards and three touchdowns — had taken over the game grew.
That forced the Browns to abandon any semblance of a balanced attack. With Charlie Whitehurst at quarterback after Cody Kessler was knocked out of the game with an injury in the first quarter, the Browns ran the ball just nine times in the second half.
“I mean we were behind. I don’t know what the score was there in the second quarter,” said Whitehurst, who the Browns signed on Sept. 20. “But, yeah, they kind of made us, we had to throw. They were stopping the run a little bit, so that’s what a good defense does.”
The reality of the NFL in October dictates that the Browns will get a chance to right their problems from this game.
“It’s a game-to-game league,” Bitonio said. “Obviously you want to run for more than [27] yards in this game. If we would have, we would have kept the defense off a little bit more and given ourselves a better shot in the game.”
In the end, Browns coach Hue Jackson said he understands it’s unacceptable.
“I was disappointed because I think we can do it a little bit better than what we did,” he said. “But they did — they slowed us down like no team has this season — so we have to go back to the drawing board. I take responsibility for that. We have to get that part better, and we will.”
George M. Thomas can be reached at gmthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GeorgeThomasABJ.