CLEVELAND — With two minutes and nine seconds remaining in the second quarter against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, the Cleveland Browns found themselves facing a 3rd and 1 from their own 28-yard line.
Clinging to a 6-0 lead, the safe -- and most conventional -- move would have been for the Browns to give the ball to the NFL's leading rusher, Nick Chubb, to secure a first down and reassess the situation after the 2-minute warning. With the Ravens out of timeouts, Cleveland could have all but assured that Baltimore wouldn't touch the ball again before the second half or at the very least punted after the two-minute warning had the conversion attempt been unsuccessful.
Instead, head coach Freddie Kitchens opted to put the ball in the hands of his other running back, Kareem Hunt, which wasn't necessarily a problem. What was a problem, however, was that the play Kitchens dialed up was the seldom-used halfback pass, which Hunt never even got to attempt as he was tackled for an eight-yard loss.
The play went so poorly that aside from Hunt's last-ditch pump-fake, it was unclear whether or not it was actually a halfback pass. After the game, Kitchens confirmed that was indeed what he had called -- and the explanation may have been even worse than the execution.
“Trying to take a shot and go for it on fourth down if we did not get it, but it did not happen," Kitchens said. "Trick play… It was going to be a halfback pass and the corner came off the edge. If we would have gotten it off, we would have been alright.
“A couple of different things happened on that play that should not have happened, but I will just say it was an option pass and I should not have called it. It is one of those plays you try to call and you try to create some momentum. If it does not happen, you come back and get it on fourth-and-1, and we just lost some yardage.”
That Kitchens claims the Browns would have attempted a fourth-and-1 from their own 28-yard line with less than two minutes remaining in the first half is perhaps more concerning than the halfback pass that was called in the first place. Had Cleveland turned the ball over on downs, Baltimore and MVP front-runner Lamar Jackson would have taken over just outside of the red zone with more than enough time to not only score but get the ball back after halftime.
Of course, that situation never came to fruition with the Browns ultimately opting to punt the ball facing a 4th and 9. As it turns out, that left the Ravens with enough time to not score just once, but twice, with Jackson finding tight end Mark Andrews for a pair of touchdown passes in the final 1:50 of the first half, before leading the Ravens on a third touchdown drive to open the second half en route to a 31-15 victory.
In a game that consisted of 124 total plays, it'd be tough to blame just one on why Cleveland lost. But in looking back on what went wrong for the Browns on Sunday, it's also not hard to find where the turning point came.
“It is always deflating, but I think we came out and moved the ball offensively in the second half," Kitchens said. "Things happen during the course of the game -- ups and downs. You have to be able to overcome the downs and convert on the ups to create them into seven points. We just did not do that enough.
"We had opportunities to make some plays and we just did not do it.”
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