Tuesday, September 22, 2009
BEREA (AP) — Eric Mangini has strict rules for his players. Break them and pay.
Two games into Mangini’s coaching tenure with the Cleveland Browns, his team doesn’t seem able to do what he wants.
The Browns’ offense can’t find the end zone with a GPS. Their defense can’t tackle and had a second straight second-half collapse. Their starting quarterback, though wildly popular, has been indecisive, inaccurate and unable to complete passes longer than 10 yards.
So bad for so long, the Browns are awful — still.
They dropped to 0-2 on Sunday with a 27-6 loss to the Denver Broncos, who put the Browns away much the same way the Minnesota Vikings did one week earlier in the opener. Trailing 13-6 entering the fourth quarter, Cleveland couldn’t come up with a big offensive play or defensive stop and dropped its eighth consecutive game dating to last season.
“I’m tired of it,” linebacker D’Qwell Jackson said in a sparse locker room on Monday. “I’m just frustrated. It’s to the point now where it’s my fourth year. Something has to be different.”
Mangini was supposed to make a difference, but the former New York Jets coach has yet to see his system take hold and produce wins. He already has overhauled a Cleveland roster that likely will undergo many more makeovers before this season ends.
No one expected Mangini, who was fired after three seasons in New York, to transform the Browns into contenders overnight, but Sunday’s loss was reminiscent of so many others since Cleveland’s 1999 expansion return — new faces, old results.
Wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who caught six passes for 92 yards against the Broncos, is at a loss to explain the losses.
“I usually come in and say the same thing — get back to the drawing board — which has been the answer for a lot of questions over the last couple of years,” he said. “We practice hard. We worked hard and it felt like we were moving in the right direction both weeks, especially last week, so Sunday definitely was a shock to us for the way we practiced.
“It’s going to take guys to make up their mind on game day to do what we do during the week and bring that to the field on Sundays.”
Mangini said the first thing he pointed out to the Browns during their Monday meeting was that they were in position to get victory No. 1.
“It’s about an inherently winnable game or as competitive a game as you’re going to see most weeks,” he said.
True to form, the Browns found a way to lose it.
Quarterback Brady Quinn had his second straight rough outing. Chosen by Mangini over Derek Anderson to be Cleveland’s starter, Quinn went 18 of 31 for 161 yards with one interception. He was sacked four times, but there were plays when he simply held the ball too long.
Many of Quinn’s errant throws sailed high over their intended target. He rarely tested Denver’s secondary with deep throws, preferring to drop it off underneath coverage.