Browns can’t overcome their miscues

Associated Press

BEREA

Browns coach Eric Mangini must have felt like he was at home in his living room scolding his three young sons.

For the second straight Monday, Cleveland’s coach stood in front of his players and lectured them about their Sunday sins.

Too many penalties. Too many turnovers. Too many mistakes.

Too this. Too that.

“They’re tired of me saying it, and I’m tired of saying it,” an exasperated Mangini said. “We can’t have penalties. We can’t. We can’t turn the ball over. We can’t do it. We’ll drill it, we’ll talk about it, we’ll review it, we’ll analyze it. ... You can’t expect to win close games.

“Two games decided by five points with big swings in momentum, you can’t do it.”

The Browns (0-2) dropped their second straight winnable game, a 16-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in a game that was almost identical to their 17-14 loss at Tampa Bay a week earlier.

For the second straight game, Cleveland’s starting quarterback — this time, it was backup Seneca Wallace filling in for injured starter Jake Delhomme — threw a costly interception. For the second straight game, the Browns failed to score in the second half as their offense disappeared. For the second straight game, Cleveland’s defense played good enough to win.

And, for the second straight game, the Browns came up short.

“We were leading both games,” wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi said, slightly shaking his head. “We turned the ball over. We had too many penalties in the second half. We just didn’t finish the way we’re supposed to.”

This is not the start the Browns wanted — nor the one Mangini may need to keep his job.

While there’s no evidence team president Mike Holmgren is ready to make any drastic moves, the Browns have no breaks in their schedule over the next seven weeks, and without a win or two or any significant improvement, the cries for Mangini’s dismissal already filling the air on sports talk shows will get louder.

The Browns, though, still have optimism despite losing to two teams they felt they should have beaten.

“We know we’re a better team and we just handed out victories,” cornerback Eric Wright said. “We were in situations where we should have won two games and we lost them.”

Mangini’s post-mortem on Cleveland’s latest loss, which dropped the Browns to 1-11 in home openers since 1999, focused on the team’s self-inflicted wounds (nine penalties for 78 yards) and the offense’s inability to move the ball in the second half.

With Wallace under center in his 15th career start, Cleveland gained only 55 yards and three first downs — one came on a penalty — after halftime.