CLEVELAND – The Browns should have been happy. The Steelers should have been angry at their own performance.
Instead, the Browns found themselves having to talk about an inexcusable incident at the end of their 21-7 victory over the Steelers that kept their fleeting playoff hopes alive when defensive end Myles Garrett lost his mind and assaulted Mason Rudolph on the field, striking him in the head with his own helmet, ripped off the quarterback’s head moments before.
The Browns should have been celebrating turning the tables on the Steelers, doing to them what the Steelers’ defense had done to opponents in the previous eight games.
The Browns intercepted Rudolph four times. They sacked him four others. Their own quarterback, Baker Mayfield, threw two touchdown passes and ran for another, escaping the Steelers’ pass rush to make several plays.
Instead, the tenor in both locker rooms dealt only with the aftermath of this:
For the Steelers (5-5), it ended a four-game winning streak and dropped them off the pace in the AFC playoff race. The Steelers entered Week 11 holding the second Wildcard spot in the conference.
The Browns (4-6) meanwhile, kept their fleeting playoff hopes on life support with their second consecutive win by knocking off their bitter rival. The victory marked the first time since the Browns rejoined the NFL in 1999 that they have beaten the Ravens and Steelers in the same season.
Instead, first-year head coach Freddie Kitchens found himself having to talk about the actions of his star defensive end.
“It does not matter what happened. I do not even care what happened,” Kitchens said when asked if Garrett had tried to tell the coach his side of the story. “We have five seconds to go in a game. That cannot happen. We have five seconds to go in a game – the biggest game that this team has won… Never beat Baltimore and Pittsburgh in the same year since 1999, and then we have to talk about this. There are 52 other guys on the team that that hurt, and it is going to hurt moving forward.”
The Steelers have a different kind of hurt moving forward.
Running back James Conner, returning after missing two games with a shoulder injury, aggravated the injury in the first quarter and was limited to 10 yards on five carries and one reception for six yards.
Receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster was knocked out of the game in the second quarter with a concussion after he was sandwiched between safety Morgan Burnett and cornerback Greedy Williams while trying to make a catch.
Then, midway through the third quarter, rookie receiver Diontae Johnson also suffered a concussion when he was hit late and in the helmet by safety Damarious Randall, earning Randall an ejection from the game.
That left the Steelers with just three receivers – James Washington, Johnny Holton and Tevin Jones – for the remainder of the game. Jones was activated off the practice squad earlier in the day when Ryan Switzer was placed on injured reserve with a back injury.
It limited what the Steelers were able to run offensively over the final 24 minutes of the game.
“A little bit,” Jones told me. “But I’ve got faith in my coaches. We’ve got calls for three receiver, two receiver and one-receiver sets. I just trusted and believed in the coaches to get everything situated and they did.”
The calls might have been right. The execution, however, left a great deal to be desired.
The Steelers were 2 of 11 on third downs. They were 0 for 3 on fourth down attempts. Rudolph, coming off perhaps his best game of the season last Sunday in a win over the Rams, had what was easily his worst game.
“Anytime you can’t convert and you’re putting the ball back in their hands, those are tough,” said Rudolph, whose four interceptions matched his total from his first seven games.
“We still had a chance to come back and keep moving the ball. We moved the ball well, I thought, we just ended up turning it over in crucial situations.”
None were more critical than this interception Rudolph put in the belly of linebacker Joe Schobert with 6:32 remaining in the game and the Steelers trailing 14-7.
Schobert returned the ball to the Pittsburgh 4, but an incompletion and four-yard loss on a run by Nick Chubb pushed the Browns back to the 8. But Mayfield, who completed 17-of-32 passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns, escaped pressure – something he did throughout the game – and found tight end Stephen Carlson in the back of the end zone for a touchdown pass that pushed the lead to 21-7.
“He did a really good job creating more time, eluding the rush and getting outside the pocket,” Steelers cornerback Joe Haden said. “They were more just scramble drills. They were just running around making plays.”
The Steelers failed to make many at all.
“I liked the effort,” Mike Tomlin said. “Some people went down on offense and we didn’t have enough playmaking.”
Rudolph completed 23-of-44 passes for 221 yards with one touchdown, but the running game produced just 58 yards on 16 carries.
Tomlin said he did not consider pulling Rudolph at any time during the rough outing, which also included this interception by former Steelers safety Morgan Burnett.
And his teammates felt this will be the kind of game from which Rudolph will learn from and move forward. With six games remaining, the Steelers need to show some kind of offensive improvement to stay competitive on nights when the defense isn’t forcing turnovers.
I asked Washington if he ever saw Rudolph’s confidence wane in the rough outing?
“I didn’t. I saw the same guy I saw in the first quarter,” Washington said. “He never gave up. We need somebody like that as a leader.”
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
DEFENSE STRUGGLES EARLY
The Steelers’ defense not only had a streak of eight consecutive games with multiple turnovers snapped, it had its run of not giving up big plays ended, as well.
Mayfield connected on this 42-yard pass to Odell Beckham off play-action on Cleveland’s first possession to set up his own 1-yard touchdown run that gave the Browns an early 7-0 lead.
Then, he scrambled out of trouble early in the second quarter to connect on a 41-yard pass to KhaDarel Hodge to set up a 1-yard touchdown pass to Jarvis Landry for a 14-0 lead.
“We saw that happening,” defensive end Tyson Alualu said of Mayfield’s scrambles out of pressure. “We saw that he was stepping up in the pocket and then rolling back and to his right. We tried to make some adjustments with somebody coming around. It’s something we’ve got to see on film and see what was really going on.”
By then, the damage was done.
The Browns gained 164 yards on their first four possessions. They had just eight first downs and 128 yards on their final 11 possessions, but with the Steelers not doing much themselves, the Browns were intent to continue running the ball to try to burn time and play field position.
“We didn’t keep him in the pocket enough on extended plays,” said Tomlin. “That was probably the difference on that side of the ball. We didn’t keep him in the pocket enough. He created some things and we weren’t strong enough on the back end in combination with the rush in terms of keeping him in it. He made a few plays we weren’t able to overcome.”
THE NOTES
• The Browns finished with 104 yards rushing, but on 35 carries, averaging 3.0 yards per attempt. Nick Chubb led the effort with 92 yards on 27 carries, an average of 3.4 yards per carry.
• Burnett suffered an Achilles’ tendon injury in the third quarter and did not return for the Browns.
• The Steelers held the ball just 26:04.
• The Browns were penalized eight times for 121 yards, while the Steelers had six for 41.
• Despite being outgained 293-236 in yardage, the Steelers had 18 first downs to 17 for the Browns.
• The Steelers’ longest offensive drive in the game was 38 yards. The Browns had 53 yards in penalties on the Steelers’ lone touchdown drive.
• Schobert led all players with 10 tackles, a sack and two interceptions.
• Nose tackle Javon Hargrave led the Steelers with nine tackles, including two for a loss.
• T.J. Watt had the Steelers’ lone sack, giving him 10.5 on the season and moving him past Garrett for the lead in the AFC.
• Watt is the first Steelers player to record back-to-back seasons with double digits in sacks since James Harrison and LaMarr Woodley both did it in 2009 and 2010.
• The loss was the first by the Steelers against the Browns since 2014. The two teams play again in two weeks at Heinz Field.
• Jones had two catches for 24 yards, the first two receptions of his career.
• Holton had one reception for 18 yards, his first of the season despite 13 targets, including seven in this game.
THE INJURIES
• James Conner (shoulder, did not return)
• JuJu Smith-Schuster (concussion, did not return)
• Diontae Johnson (concussion, did not return)
• Ola Adeniyi (concussion, did not return)
• Anthony Chickillo (knee, DNP)
• Benny Snell (knee, DNP)
THE SCHEDULE
The Steelers (5-5) travel to Cincinnati to face the winless Bengals (0-9) Nov. 24. They are off over the weekend and will return to work Monday to begin preparations for that game. Tomlin will hold his weekly press conference at noon next Tuesday. I'll have all the coverage from them all.
THE COVERAGE
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MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers at Browns, Cleveland, Nov. 14, 2019 -- MATT SUNDAY / DKPS