BEREA, Ohio — If the Cleveland Browns needed a reminder of just how short time can be on the football field, even for the best, most experienced players, they got several in last Thursday’s 21-7 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland.
Instead of celebrating a rare victory over the Steelers, the Browns (4-6) spent almost all of the postgame interview sessions talking about defensive end Myles Garrett losing control in the final seconds and earning an indefinite suspension and safety Morgan Burnett suffering a season-ending Achilles injury.
“I wouldn’t say a cloud, but it definitely made us realize that all our goals are ahead of us, and they can be taken away like that,” Browns defensive back T.J. Carrie said.
“Those things can happen where you lose three or four guys in a game, and it’s like, ‘Okay, now we have to regroup. We’ve got to come back to the drawing board and dial up some more things to help us be successful.’ It is a bitter win because you lose so many guys and you never want to end up in that type of situation.”
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Pending an appeal, the Browns lost Garrett for the balance of the 2019 season because an incident that boiled over into a brawl when he brought Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph to the ground well after a third-down play with eight seconds remaining in the game.
After the hit, Rudolph appeared to rip off Garrett’s helmet after delivering a couple of kicks below the belt of the Pro Bowl defensive end. Garrett responded by ripping off Rudolph’s helmet with several powerful tugs, and later, swinging it at and connecting to the quarterback’s head when the signal-caller pursued the matter further.
When Garrett ended up on the ground after getting tangled up with Steelers offensive lineman David DeCastro, center Maurkice Pouncey tried to protect his quarterback and delivered several kicks to the helmet and multiple punches to the Browns’ Pro Bowl defensive end.
It was then that Browns defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi escalated further the already volatile situation by pushing Rudolph from behind and to the ground, at which time, players left both benches and a scrum ensued in the end zone that took several minutes to get under control.
“It’s hard, man because we lose some great guys,” Carrie said. “I feel like right now, at this time, there’s really no time to waste. We’ve stacked two good games on top of each other, and we’re looking forward to continuing stacking them.
“There’s no way to replace the amount of guys that we lost last game moving forward. That means we’re going to have to have a tremendous amount of talented young players come up and make some effort to make some impact plays for us.”
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As the Browns begin to prepare for the stretch run of the regular season with a playoff berth still very much on the line, they will have to rely on a younger corps of players to step in and replace the likes of Garrett and Burnett.
“It brings us closer together to figure out, ‘Okay, how are we going to do this?,’ and then, whoever we put in those positions, ‘We’ve got your back. Go out there and play free. Go out there and have fun,’” Carrie said.
“This is a game we’ve played since we were little kids, little boys. It’s nothing more difficult than that, so just making sure that everyone feels that we all have confidence and trust and belief within one another.”
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