Labriola on the loss to the Browns

It was a humbling experience all the way around.

The Steelers were flying high after their fifth straight win, an 18-16 bar fight with the Ravens left them at 8-2 and a topic among the talking heads as a team in the mix for a top 2 seed in the AFC. They also knew what awaited them in Cleveland, because as the Steelers boarded their buses on Saturday for the short drive up the Turnpike, among their baggage were 3 losses in their previous four trips to the shores of Lake Erie.

And while the “on paper” assessment showed the Steelers with an edge in every category based on the first 10 games of this regular season, a blowout was not in the forecast. The Browns would still need help from the Steelers, and it was provided in what ended up being a 24-19 loss on Thursday Night Football.

The Browns were being quarterbacked by Jameis Winston after Deshaun Watson was forced to the injured reserve list, and Winston had been in the league long enough to have a reputation.

The first overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft by Tampa Bay, Winston was a starter from Day 1 for the Buccaneers. During his 5 seasons there, Winston led the NFL in attempts, yards, and interceptions, while also throwing at least 19 touchdown passes in each of those seasons. In a word, he was a gunslinger.

But the thing about gunslingers is they end up getting shot. In 101 regular season games, Winston threw 102 interceptions and took 207 sacks. Probably figure on 400 hits on the quarterback to go along with those sacks and interceptions.

Winston had developed a pattern. Always a tough guy, but if pressured Winston would take sacks and make mistakes with the football. In a loss to the Chargers on Nov. 3, he took 6 sacks and threw 3 interceptions under consistent pressure. But the previous week, he put up 335 yards and 3 touchdown passes in a win over the Ravens because they let him off the hook by dropping a couple of interceptions.

The individual matchups the Steelers needed to win to put necessary pressure on Winston all seemed to be in their favor. The Browns’ starting left tackle was on IR, and the next man up had been ruled out of this game with a knee injury. Their starting left tackle became Germain Ifedi, a journeyman who had been with 5 teams since being a No. 1 pick by Seattle in 2016, and their starting right tackle was Jack Conklin, another former No. 1 pick who had been on and off IR and PUP 5 times since November 2021.

That the Steelers ended up with 1 sack and 6 hits on Winston while he passed for 219 yards, including completions of 29, 26, 24, and 18 yards, and 1 touchdown is statistical evidence their pass rush was not what needed it to be.

The situation was just as grim when the Steelers had the football. Twice they went for it on fourth-and-short, and they lost yardage both times. Their rushing total of 120 was enhanced by one 30-yard dash down the sideline by Justin Fields. And the Browns pass rush sacked Russell Wilson 4 times and hit him a 9 times, with Myles Garrett going off for 3 sacks and a forced fumble in the first half. Garrett won coming off edge, and once he started on the edge and looped into the middle before coming in clean for his third sack.

And to some degree, the Steelers had themselves to blame, because having 12 of their 34 rushing attempts end up as no gain or minus-yardage put them in the multiple one-dimensional passing situations that teed up Garrett. Even on completed passes for chunks of yardage, Wilson took some shots from a defensive front that looked to be getting the best of the play.

In the early stages of the game, the Steelers were party to a sequence of events that gave the 2-8 Browns hope and allowed their confidence to grow. Their first two offensive possessions ended with a missed field goal and then a turnover on downs when they lost yardage on fourth-and-2. After the Steelers took a 3-0 lead on a 48-yard field goal, the Browns responded with a 12-play, 80-yard touchdown drive, and then Garrett followed with his strip-sack 2 plays later, which made it a 10 -3 deficit when Dustin Hopkins cashed in the turnover with a 34-yard field goal.

It was 10-3 at halftime, and the script had been flipped. As James Harrison used to say, “It ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.” The Browns believed they could win, and as their confidence grew the Cleveland partisans among the 67,431 reacted in full throat. The team they had watched go 1-4 in their first 5 inside Huntington Bank Field had a hated rival on the ropes.

But these Steelers do not go quietly. They arrived in Cleveland having found ways to win with defense, or with special teams. They actually were 2-0 in games where they couldn’t cross the goal line. So it was completely in character for them to rise up and take a 19-18 lead with 6:13 remaining in the fourth quarter.

The comeback began with a 13-play, 71-yard field goal drive that included a 35-yard hookup to Van Jefferson and a fourth-and-1 conversion pass to Pat Freiermuth. At that point, with the bowl of the stadium resembling a freshly-shaken snow globe, the Steelers could’ve used a stop from a defense that entered the game ranked No. 2 in the NFL in points allowed. Instead, the Browns responded with a touchdown that capped a 10-play, 65-yard drive and included an 18-yard completion to the backup tight end and a 29-yard completion to the practice squad call-up tight end.

Staying in character, the Steelers then put together 6 minutes of the kind of complementary football they hadn’t played all night. It began with a 7-play, 69-yard drive that included 5 running plays, and was capped by Jaylen Warren’s 3-yard run. The deficit cut to 18-13, the defense delivered a dynamic play when Nick Herbig blew past Ifedi and strip-sacked Winston, with DeShon Elliott recovering at the Cleveland 27-yard line. Two plays after the takeaway, Wilson spotted Austin down the middle in a snow squall and delivered a perfect pass. The 23-yard touchdown gave the Steelers a 19-18 lead.

With 4:28 remaining and the Browns staring down a third-and-10 from the Steelers 38-yard line, Bad Jameis showed up. Winston missed WR Elijah Moore badly, and Donte Jackson made the catch for the defense’s second takeaway in just a little over two-and-a-half-minutes.

Now it was time for the 8-2 team, the AFC North Division leading team, the team on a five-game winning streak to put the 2-8 opponent to bed. Win your sixth one-score game of the season. Be what it’s supposed to be.

But each phase contributes to the failure. The offense went three-and-out. Punter Corliss Waitman, who came into the game averaging 46.4 and had kicks of 51, 52, 71, and 52 yards the previous Sunday vs. the Ravens, hit a 15-yard shank. Then the defense had a chance to close out the game but could not meet the challenge.

Good Jameis returned. He converted a fourth-and-3 with a 5-yard pass to WR Jerry Jeudy, and then a third-and-6 with a 15-yard pass to Jeudy. Two runs by Nick Chubb at the heart of the Steelers defense later, and 19-18 had become a 24-19 deficit with 57 seconds left. Dagger.

The Browns hate the Steelers with the same intensity that the Steelers hate the Ravens, and they had come away with a victory that seemed so unlikely three hours earlier. The Steelers will still sit atop the AFC North and their 8-3 will still be one of the top three records in the conference at Thanksgiving. But this one is going to leave a mark.