Mistakes hurt winless Browns

Associated Press

BEREA

Browns linebacker D’Qwell Jackson started to guess the number of missed tackles in Sunday’s loss at Cincinnati but stopped himself before tossing out a figure.

“A ton,” he said.

Coach Pat Shurmur wouldn’t divulge the count, either, but hinted that is was substantial.

“You guys can probably come up with a number,” he told reporters.

Too many.

Poor tackling, penalties, blown coverage by the secondary and other mistakes contributed to a 34-27 loss to the Bengals and negated several positives for the winless Browns, who received sensational, bounce-back performances from rookie running back Trent Richardson and quarterback Brandon Weeden, but still came up short.

On Monday, Shurmur and his coaching staff went over the game tape and worked with the young Browns on “corrections.” There’s plenty to fix.

And it should probably start on special teams. The Browns fell into a 7-0 hole less than two minutes into the game, when Bengals return man Adam “Pacman” Jones took back a punt 84 yards for a touchdown. On his return, Jones escaped six tackles, leaving a trail of Browns scattered across the field at Paul Brown Stadium.

The first miss was by rookie gunner Johnson Bademosi, who seemed to have Jones wrapped up but let him slip away.

“I had an opportunity to make a play and I didn’t,” Bademosi lamented. “That’s my job. We left way too many plays on the field and that was one of them.”

Shurmur was disappointed that what seemed to be a routine punt turned into something spectacular.

“The ball was punted in an area where we had a guy in his face,” Shurmur sad. “If you don’t make that tackle, then you have to make him go sideways. He didn’t make the tackle, and Pacman went vertical. We had other opportunities to get him on the ground and we didn’t do it. No excuses for that.”

The poor tackling was a problem all day, but particularly on Jones’ return and a 50-yard TD by Bengals wide receiver Andrew Hawkins, who took a short pass from a scrambling Andy Dalton on a busted play and turned it into a back-breaking score that gave Cincinnati a 31-17 lead with 10:44 remaining.

Browns rookie cornerback Trevin Wade had Hawkins covered tightly as he ran a crossing route. But when Dalton ran from pressure, Wade allowed Hawkins to drift away and then couldn’t recover in time to make the tackle. But as Hawkins picked his way down the sideline, there were several other Browns defenders, including cornerback Buster Skrine, who had a chance to bring him down but couldn’t.

“There’s probably four or five missed tackles and angles were bad,” Jackson said, painfully recalling the play. “We’ve got to clean up those areas of the game a little bit.”