The Cleveland Browns lost to the New York Jets on Sunday in a game that could’ve seen the Browns clinch a playoff birth but that was not to be.
The Cleveland Browns suffered just their fifth loss of the season, dropping to 10-5 against the now 23-13 New York Jets. The Browns were without three offensive linemen and four wide receivers for the game, all for different reasons. The receivers, however, were all ruled out due to COVID-contact traveling measures.
The Browns fell from fifth to seventh in the playoff standing with a loss, getting leapfrogged by the Miami Dolphins and Baltimore Ravens, both of whom won this week. While it wasn’t the Browns’ most desired outcome, the fact is the Browns still control their own destiny to make the playoffs.
The loss also secured that the Pittsburgh Steelers have secured the division and a playoff spot, meaning a lot of those players won’t play for too long come next Sunday. It shouldn’t matter if they do or not, because the Browns should be mostly whole come next week regardless.
The four receivers, KhaDarel Hodge, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Jarvis Landry, and Rashard Higgins, will all be back next week, as will rookie left tackle Jedrick Wills. While Wills has struggled at times this year, he’s a dramatically different player than the other options, not named Chris Hubbard.
The defense was missing a few pieces as well, but even when they’re all on the field, the Browns defense has still been bad.
So let’s take a look at the best and worst of this game.
The Good
They never stopped fighting
The Browns never stopped fighting in this game, not until the last turnover. The team fell behind quickly but refused to stay down. They kept fighting back throughout the game and never truly felt out of it. The defense, despite their struggles, made some key stops against a bad Jets offense, and despite spending the entire day running for his life, Baker Mayfield nearly leads the team back.
Unfortunately, that’s about all we can say that was good about this game.