CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Browns had 305 yards of offense the first three quarters of Sunday's loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
In the fourth quarter they had 70 -- and 70 came on one pass from Brian Hoyer to rookie Taylor Gabriel. The other 13 plays in the fourth quarter netted zero yards. The final quarter for the Browns was a textbook example of how not to win a game when it matters most, as the Browns stumbled over and over. They missed a field goal and had another blocked, were 0-for-4 on third downs and went three-and-out on their last two drives.
Even the one positive play the Browns had was fraught with what could have been, because Gabriel was so wide open on the play he could have easily scored. The Browns had that pass in their back pocket, Hoyer said, for the coverage Baltimore used. Gabriel called it "a perfect play."
"I saw he was wide open," Hoyer said, "just threw it and let him run underneath it."
Except Gabriel stutter-stepped as the ball was in the air, which forced him to lunge for the ball, which took him to the ground. He was able to get up and scamper to the nine, but had he caught the ball in stride he would have scored easily.
"I'm a little upset,” Gabriel said of not scoring. "But at the same time it just felt good getting my hands on the ball."
It was emblematic of the Browns' fourth quarter, which was filled with mistakes. Billy Cundiff doinked a 50-yard field goal off the left upright, then had one blocked from 36, leaving six points off the scoreboard.
Of the 50-yarder, Cundiff said: "The timing didn’t feel like we were on.”
Of the second, he said: "I thought I hit a really good ball. Then it’s the double-thump. As a kicker and punter, that’s definitely what you don’t want to hear."
Asa Jackson blocked the field goal from the outside left of the defense, racing past Billy Winn. Either Jackson was too fast or Winn was too slow to get out of his stance to impede Jackson. Browns coach Mike Pettine said some of the snaps on the kicks might have been low.
"All I can tell you is that it was blocked, and if we do everything correctly it shouldn’t have been," said holder Spencer Lanning. "At the end of the day it’s just not good enough."
The Browns helped the Ravens with other miscues. A missed handoff and then a penalty on Hoyer for throwing a (touchdown) pass when he was past the line pushed the second field goal to the 36. A brutal pass interference penalty on rookie Justin Gilbert gave the Ravens the ball at the Browns' 5. There, the Browns were called for 12 men on the field for the second time in the game. Pettine lamented those miscues, saying he and the coaching staff cost the players the game.
"It’s one of the things I’m talking about," Pettine said. "We need to be better with our procedures."
Especially since two plays after the second 12-man penalty, the defense had to call timeout to avoid a third.
There was more. Travis Benjamin did not field a late punt, which rolled to the Browns' 9 and effectively flipped field position toward the Ravens. Baltimore started its game-winning drive at midfield.
"I got up under the ball correctly, and at the last minute a gust of wind blew it and it went past my hand," Benjamin said. "I didn’t want to go back and reach for the ball, so I just let it pass by."
The Browns also had two chances to put the game away late, but two drives took just 55 seconds off the clock with consecutive three-and-outs. On the second, Hoyer threw behind Andrew Hawkins on third-and-7 from the 10.
"I have got to put it in front of him," Hoyer said.
"If we get that, they don’t have any timeouts and the game is over," Joe Thomas said.
If, if, if.
Players lamented the inability of the team to come up with a needed play when it mattered most the way they did against New Orleans. But they also lamented the mistakes they made that led to Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco being 12-1 against the Browns.
"We have no one to blame but ourselves," Hoyer said, "and that’s what hurts the most."
