Postgame Report After Browns Fall to Rams, 36-19
Brendan Gulick and Anthony Moeglin give their initial thoughts and reactions to the Browns loss in LA against the Rams.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:08 Boy, well, that's not exactly what the crowds wanted there.
00:13 Especially toward the end of the game, final score 36-19.
00:18 LA Rams beat Cleveland Brown,
00:21 ending Cleveland a second loss [INAUDIBLE]
00:25 >> And coming back to Cleveland with some frustrating things in
00:29 the rear view mirror, I hope, as Cleveland tries to figure it out here moving forward.
00:34 Browns are now seven and five on the season.
00:37 Brendan Gulick, Anthony McGinnigan for Browns Digest coverage.
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00:55 I'm coming from home today.
00:57 Anthony went as a fan out in Los Angeles.
00:59 And so he's getting the full LA fan experience, which is awesome.
01:04 We're gonna find out if you're any good as a reporter, can you handle yourself
01:08 in live action when people try to distract you in the background?
01:11 >> Try, hey, we're gonna try for sure.
01:13 I see everybody in the background doing jumping jacks and everything.
01:16 But hey, let them, they got the win.
01:19 It's a lot of Rams fans behind me.
01:21 I see my mic going in and out.
01:23 I know I got some people cheering behind me, but what a bummer, man.
01:26 Just what a total, total bummer.
01:27 It's not a bummer that I traveled across the country to come watch it.
01:30 It's a bummer that what we just watched, I mean, it's tough.
01:33 It's a tough, tough loss.
01:35 >> Let's start with Joe Flacco, right?
01:36 Because that was the conversation coming in was the Browns are starting a fourth
01:40 different quarterback this year.
01:42 And how would it look with Flacco two weeks into this thing or
01:47 just less than two weeks in being forced into action?
01:50 The reality is I thought up until maybe the last two series,
01:56 I thought he looked pretty decent.
01:58 >> Looked good, man.
01:58 I mean, especially think about my favorite part about his day today was first
02:03 try of the game come out.
02:05 There was a third and 15 that he ripped.
02:07 He ripped to Mario Cooper's little post route called a bang eight, right?
02:10 When he gets to the top of his route, he makes the receiver makes his cut and
02:13 that ball's flying.
02:14 And you watch the tape back and we'll watch it on Tuesday, me and Spence will.
02:18 But you'll see it, Mario gets out of his cut, he looks and
02:21 the ball is hitting him in the chest.
02:23 And that's something we really truly haven't seen,
02:25 especially the past couple weeks when we've been with PJ Walker and DTR.
02:29 And even with the Sean, the Sean's been kind of getting back.
02:32 But some of the stuff we saw today was even some of like, I was watching him,
02:36 just throwing the ball away and just protecting the football for the most part.
02:39 He was spectacular.
02:41 He was doing a great job and you get the ball back losing 20 to 19.
02:45 Hindsight's always 20/20, right?
02:46 Why don't we just run the ball three straight times and see what happens.
02:49 But we decided to come out, play some pass and Elijah had a step on his guy.
02:54 And I guess Joe Flacco thought he was back in 2012 and not in 2023.
02:59 So he had it in him and he just came up a little bit short.
03:02 It even hurts more that John Johnson III picked it off.
03:05 >> I think the prognostication here is like,
03:08 there are a lot of things that Flacco seems to do really well in the pocket.
03:14 There's a poise, there's a calmness, a composure to him that we haven't seen
03:20 a lot of, he's not frantic, he reads the defense, he makes quick decisions.
03:26 And actually, I thought he showed some pretty impressive arm strength today.
03:30 The bigger challenge is the mobility factor,
03:32 if he's flushed out, that's where you're lacking here.
03:35 >> And you're lacking in a number of different ways, but
03:37 he combats that with just protecting the football.
03:40 We've seen it now a number of times when you don't turn the ball over and
03:44 you're allowing your special team and your punt group to come out there and
03:47 kick it deep and kind of flip the field.
03:50 I'm getting some people behind me if you can hear that.
03:52 But when you can flip the field, that's a big thing.
03:55 And his ability to just, hey, if there was pressure, just throw the ball away.
03:59 Get it in the ground, throw it away, do whatever you gotta do to just keep
04:03 this team alive.
04:04 And he was doing a great job of it right up until that second drive of
04:08 the fourth quarter.
04:09 I thought he played really well.
04:10 It was fun to watch him.
04:11 It was a different quarterback than we've watched the entire year where it was, hey,
04:15 we're gonna put the onus on you, make the good plays, make the smart plays.
04:18 We're gonna keep you in the pocket and allow you to deliver.
04:21 It was really old school, a lot of fun to watch when he was playing well.
04:24 >> What did you think of Elijah Moore today?
04:26 Caught four passes for 83 yards, but
04:29 there were eight balls thrown his way that he didn't come up with.
04:32 And it's kind of hard to separate those two for me.
04:36 >> Yeah, no, it's tough because I wrote about it this morning.
04:38 I thought Joe Flacco, when he got uncomfortable,
04:41 the one person he knows on this team is Elijah Moore.
04:43 He played with him last year.
04:44 And Elijah, in the four games that Joe Flacco played in, Elijah had good games.
04:51 He was averaging about three and a half catches a game, over 60 yards.
04:54 And that was with one bad game at the end of the season.
04:57 So I thought Joe was gonna go to him a lot, and he did.
05:00 Got a couple drops at the end.
05:01 He's gotta fix the drop.
05:02 This Browns offense, Amari goes out with a head injury after a drop.
05:06 But this drop issue is now what we thought two weeks ago was just, hey,
05:11 figure it out and fix it moving forward.
05:12 It's now become a real problem for this offense.
05:16 And Amari had a couple, Najoku had a couple, Elijah had a couple.
05:19 And it's just really tough, especially when the yards are so important,
05:23 they're hard to come by.
05:24 It's hard to get going with drops like that.
05:26 And Elijah had a couple today that were just really painful,
05:30 painful to watch, painful to see.
05:31 >> All right, I'm gonna bring up an unpopular topic at the moment.
05:34 It's the Browns defense.
05:37 We've been talking about this group for several months now as this vaunted
05:43 defense, number one in the NFL, all these flowery positive things.
05:48 I'm having a hard time believing that just simply Denzel Ward's absence
05:55 has made this group from incredible to human.
06:01 Again, I'm not an X's and O's expert the way you and some others are.
06:07 I don't think MJ Emerson had a great game today.
06:10 That's kind of my gut reaction watching the game was like, man, tough day for 23.
06:18 And beyond that, I mean, I know LA hit some chunk plays, but I mean, man,
06:22 they were averaging six and a half yards per play.
06:25 Like, that is not gonna cut it.
06:28 Hey, I appreciate the expert tag you put on my head.
06:32 I don't know that I call myself an expert.
06:33 But what I would say is this, the actual truth of the Browns defense,
06:39 they have some great stats, okay?
06:41 And they're really anchored by about four or five games where you faced
06:46 an injured Joe Burrow in week one, you faced Ryan Tannehill who got benched.
06:50 You faced Kenny Pickett twice, who they did, Kenny Pickett gets you once, but
06:54 both games statistically weren't great.
06:56 Then you face Clayton Toon against the Arizona Cardinals.
06:58 That's five games in a season now that's 12 games deep that aren't against
07:03 quarterbacks that, in Joe Burrow's case, Joe Burrow's a great quarterback, but
07:06 he wasn't healthy when he played.
07:08 But the other four are like, hey, you're really throwing out a quarterback
07:13 against a really, that's a talented defense.
07:15 But the stats get super inflated from that because of what you're facing.
07:21 We're now starting to see it.
07:22 When you go to Russell Wilson last week, to Matt Stafford this week, and
07:25 it was more than just the Fukunukuwa big touchdown down the seam,
07:28 which was a great throw and a great concept they had up.
07:32 It was just more than that, man.
07:33 When you're able to complete the ball at ease, and
07:35 the Browns defensive line was totally neutralized today.
07:38 Just totally neutralized by game plan and by quarterback.
07:41 And when you get that,
07:42 you don't have much on the back end to kind of supplement it.
07:45 It makes it really hard.
07:45 >> I mean, I don't wanna be prisoner of the moment.
07:51 >> Yeah.
07:53 >> This might be the most deflating loss of the season for me.
07:56 >> Yeah. >> Right?
07:57 I mean, it's not the most emotional loss.
07:59 You felt the Pittsburgh loss early in the year, the Seattle loss.
08:05 Those really grinded at you for sure.
08:07 This one's a little deflating because it's even more than last week.
08:13 Because for me, it's the second game in a row of,
08:19 you're dealing with a lot of injuries and it feels like you've been exposed a little
08:23 bit, and you're probably coming home to play a Jaguars team.
08:29 Then at worst is gonna be eight and four.
08:30 And frankly, I kind of expect them to beat the Bengals on Monday Night Football
08:36 tomorrow, so you might have a nine and three team coming in here next Sunday.
08:41 And it's amazing how the team doesn't do this,
08:47 but it feels like that roller coaster of man will never lose again.
08:51 Things are great.
08:52 To now it's like you've dropped two in a row, you're playing a really good team.
08:56 Who is gonna present some really interesting unique challenges that we'll
08:59 get into this week.
09:00 But it's not slipping away in its entirety, but
09:06 this is probably the biggest adversity in my opinion,
09:10 the Browns have faced now in probably two months.
09:12 The combination of you've lost back to back games, you've been on the road now
09:16 for what is it eight or nine days since you were last in Cleveland.
09:20 And you've come back to the pack a little bit,
09:22 we're gonna see what this group is made of.
09:24 >> No, you truly are, and there's a million things kind of flying through my head
09:28 right now.
09:29 One of the biggest is you had an opportunity today, not only to beat the Rams,
09:33 but with Pittsburgh losing to Arizona, you really had a chance to take a step up.
09:39 Right, and to get in front of them and really just kind of put them away.
09:43 Like you don't wanna be dealing with Pittsburgh as the season kind of
09:46 continues, they're gonna be there, but you wanna just get them in your rear view.
09:50 You had a really good chance today to get to eight and four, to come back with
09:54 the two wild card teams behind you with Pittsburgh and Houston now at seven and
09:57 five and be like, hey, we control our own destiny.
10:00 It's really truly Brendan in my opinion, and this could change, but
10:03 right now it's really a race to ten.
10:05 Like a team that can get to ten wins is gonna be in good shape and
10:09 you look at our schedule, right?
10:11 It helps that the New York Jets lost today cuz you're hoping that Aaron Rodgers
10:16 just doesn't come back.
10:17 If he comes back, you got a problem in your hand, but
10:19 they lose today, they're eliminated from the playoff.
10:21 You got the nine and three,
10:22 potentially nine and three Jaguars coming to town next week.
10:25 That ain't no walk in the park.
10:27 Then you're gonna have the Bears, which you need to get a win.
10:29 You got the Jets, you got the Bengals on the road, which you could do.
10:32 And you got a couple mixed in there that are like, hey, we have to get wins.
10:36 You have to find them.
10:37 Today was a great day to get a win, especially you're trailing 20 to 19.
10:41 The missed extra point was so deflating.
10:43 You could feel it in the stadium.
10:44 It was like, all right, here come the Browns.
10:46 Boom, they're rolling, they're coming back.
10:48 Boom, they missed the extra point.
10:49 You're like, same old Browns.
10:50 And then the next time we touched the ball was an interception.
10:54 It was tough, but it's like, hey, we're getting to five games left.
10:58 There's not many wins left on the schedule.
10:59 Where are you gonna find them?
11:00 And you gotta go, you gotta capitalize really when you get the chance.
11:04 Yeah, and the reality is, because of the way the NFL is set up,
11:07 kind of as a league of parody, you sort of
11:11 looked at the schedule at the beginning of the year and you're like, oh, perfect.
11:15 Jacksonville can get that one.
11:18 Jets, sure.
11:19 Bears, you betcha.
11:21 Bengals seem to have their number.
11:23 Those are good ones.
11:24 And--
11:25 Texans, rookie quarterback.
11:26 Oh, by the way, Texans with a rookie quarterback,
11:28 like, yeah, count that one in the win column, too.
11:31 And now you sit here and look at the schedule the rest of the way
11:34 and it's like, that's a little tougher than we first thought.
11:39 So again, not unattainable.
11:43 And each of those opportunities exist on their own, right?
11:47 It's not like just because you've lost two in a row
11:50 that, bang, the season's over here.
11:51 Like, it's going to be a long flight home
11:54 and it's going to be a frustrating flight,
11:55 but there's a chance to get right against a team that
11:59 will have had one fewer day to prep for you
12:02 when you get back home.
12:03 So again, this is not like sound the alarm bell, panic,
12:10 pull the fire alarm kind of loss.
12:12 But this one stings in a unique way, in my opinion,
12:14 because it felt like one you probably could have gotten.
12:17 You could have gotten-- remember, Brendan,
12:19 let's rewind eight days to before the Broncos game.
12:23 You need to come out west and at least split.
12:26 Like, if you do anything in your power to split those games,
12:29 you're going to be in good shape.
12:31 Come back home eight and four, you're feeling really good.
12:33 But you lose DTR, then Joe Flacco's got to start.
12:36 He looks good.
12:37 The defense kind of lets you down today and you're like,
12:39 man, this team has been through so much, so many injuries,
12:42 so much this, so much up and down,
12:44 and great wins and bad losses.
12:46 You're like, hey, let's just split these games
12:48 and move on to this home stretch we got coming up.
12:51 Unable to do so.
12:52 And it's really-- it's a punch to the gut, man.
12:54 It's a tough, tough loss for this team that's really
12:58 got to kind of buckle down and find some wins
13:00 during this back month of the year.
13:02 It is, but I think if-- again, and just
13:04 trying to be somewhat level-headed objective
13:07 about this, if we were to rewind four games ago,
13:11 you look at that Baltimore-Pittsburgh stretch
13:14 and you were just-- you were begging.
13:15 And I don't mean you personally, but just in general,
13:17 like, get one of these two.
13:19 No, personally, I was begging for it.
13:21 I was begging for it.
13:22 I was like, we need to split.
13:24 So you get both of those, and it gives you a little wiggle room.
13:27 7 and 5, the season's not over, man.
13:29 Like, it's OK.
13:31 But you don't have a ton of margin for error
13:34 here because you got some tougher games
13:36 than we realized coming down the stretch.
13:37 And we can look at it now, too.
13:39 Like, you got Houston, who's going to be--
13:41 they're going to be a factor in the wild card.
13:43 You got a game coming up against them on Christmas Eve.
13:46 You got the Colts, who won today.
13:48 That would have been-- that was the one you were watching.
13:51 You were like, hey, this could be great
13:52 if the Titans beat the Colts.
13:54 And they had a chance, but Colts scoring overtime, get the win.
13:57 And then it's Pittsburgh.
13:58 So those are kind of the three teams.
13:59 You and then those three teams are vying
14:01 for three wild card spots.
14:03 You got the tiebreaker over the Colts.
14:05 We'll see how things shake out against the Steelers.
14:09 And then you got the Texans coming up here
14:12 in a couple of weeks.
14:13 Christmas Eve, I'll tell you what, that's
14:14 going to be the game to circle.
14:16 They can just limp through these next two weeks,
14:18 get through them, get a win or two,
14:20 get to Houston with a chance to kind of close that--
14:23 clinch that wild card spot.
14:25 All right, final thoughts from being on site,
14:28 watching the team play in front of an interesting crowd.
14:33 We were texting about it.
14:34 I wanted to get this off.
14:35 I was hoping to get it off in a win.
14:36 Man, I'll tell you what, I'll rate that football atmosphere
14:41 not just like any--
14:42 like this stadium is a spaceship.
14:44 It's got every dollar pumped into it.
14:47 That atmosphere was horrible.
14:48 I would rank it below--
14:49 I go to football games on Thursday nights, Friday
14:52 nights, Saturdays, Sundays.
14:53 I've seen a million football games in my life.
14:55 That was the worst atmosphere I've ever seen.
14:57 I mean, on the countdown, Brendan,
14:59 the countdown to kickoff wasn't even countdown to kickoff.
15:02 It was called countdown to showtime.
15:03 They don't even know what foot--
15:04 like it wasn't even to game time.
15:06 It was to showtime.
15:07 Just a totally different place, totally different world.
15:10 It was fun to be out here, though.
15:12 I'll tell you what, this stadium is unbelievable.
15:15 And the fans were fun.
15:16 The fans, I got to sit around.
15:17 We're going to get one here.
15:18 We're going to get a live--
15:19 a live Ram fan.
15:20 Boo.
15:21 [LAUGHTER]
15:23 No, this guy is great.
15:25 They love Browns fans.
15:27 Oh, I love it.
15:28 No, it's awesome.
15:30 No, it's awesome.
15:31 We had a lot of fun, especially the guys
15:35 that I got to sit next to.
15:36 We're a lot of great-- we're a lot of good time.
15:38 But just a different atmosphere, especially
15:40 compared to first energy-- or excuse me, Cleveland Browns
15:42 stadium.
15:44 All right, we'll wrap it from there.
15:48 Not a great-- not a great ending.
15:50 Some good moments for sure.
15:52 But overall, a frustrating day as the Browns
15:54 lose by a final score of 36 to 19.
15:57 Plenty more to come on BrownsDigest.com.
15:59 We've got more video coverage coming for you as well,
16:01 especially as we break down this one over the next 48 hours
16:04 and eventually turn the page to the Jacksonville Jaguars, who
16:08 are coming to Cleveland next Sunday.
16:11 For Anthony Meglin, I'm Brendan Gulick.
16:12 Thanks for hanging out with us for a little bit
16:14 here on Browns Digest.
16:15 Hope to see you over on the website real soon.
16:17 And again, please subscribe to this YouTube channel
16:19 for the latest news and info on the team.
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