Browns: Wallace accepts blunder blame

By Mary Kay Cabot

Cleveland Plain Dealer

BALTIMORE

Browns quarterback Seneca Wallace assumed full blame for calling a running play at the end of the first half instead of spiking the ball like Coach Pat Shurmur wanted.

After getting to the Ravens’ 5 with 34 seconds left in the half, the Browns botched the final two plays, failed to spike the ball and watched the clock tick down to zero without any points. The sequence let the Ravens preserve their 17-0 halftime lead and proved extremely costly after the Browns mounted a comeback in the 20-14 loss.

“It was bad communication on my behalf,” said Wallace, who called for the run play with 11 seconds left instead of spiking the ball. “At that point, it’s not the head coach’s fault. It’s my job to make sure I get everybody on the right page.

“At that point in the game, the crowd is into it and it’s tough,” Wallace said. “I’m not making any excuses. At the end of the day I’ve got to make sure we’re in the right situation to get points out of it.”

With 57 seconds left in the half, the Browns called their final timeout and had a second-and-1 at the 8. Peyton Hillis, who ran well against the Ravens’ second-ranked run defense, plowed 3 yards for a first down at the 5 with 34 seconds remaining.

Wallace then found tight end Evan Moore on the sidelines for a 2-yard pass to the 3, but Moore didn’t take the necessary step to be ruled out of bounds, and the clock fizzled to 11 seconds.

“Yeah, I thought I was out of bounds,” Moore said. “I thought it was kind of a no-brainer. But apparently I was told after the play there’s a rule — you have to at least take a step forward to get out of bounds because if you don’t, that means your forward progress is stopped and the ball is probably dead right there. So I could’ve done a better job of getting out of bounds in hindsight.”

Once Moore realized the clock was still running, “we just hurried to the line, ran the play, and like I said, the result was no points, so obviously we could’ve done something better.”

Moore wasn’t the only one who thought the clock had stopped. It caught others off-guard, including running back Peyton Hillis.

“There’s no doubt,” Hillis said. “Especially in the kind of situation that we were in, everything being fast-paced, getting things on the run, getting the play on the run, stuff like that, and everybody’s being sporadic or hectic to get to their spots, so I think that could have had a lot to do with it.

“I was caught in the moment. I wasn’t really looking at the clock at that point.”

While it was ticking down to 11 seconds, Shurmur was frantically yelling and motioning from the sidelines for Wallace to spike the ball.

“I would have never called a run in that situation with that much time,” Shurmur said. “There was some communication there that didn’t play through.”

But Wallace had a better idea.

“The thinking was pop them and get an easy one and score a touchdown,” Wallace said. “We’d just run a pass play and they might be playing a little soft thinking we’re going to pass it again, [so] hit them with a running play.”

Hillis was stopped for no gain and the clock struck zero.

“I should have gotten the ball in the end zone and enough said,” he said.