Pettine: There are no moral victories

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

In case the Browns missed his message Sunday, first-year coach Mike Pettine reminded them that their comeback at Pittsburgh wasn’t enough.

As he reviewed the 30-27 loss to the Steelers, Pettine told his players they need to do more.

“There’s a phrase for almost winning,” Pettine said. “It’s called ‘losing.’ ”

This guy isn’t nicknamed “Blunt Force Trauma” for nothing.

Pettine did find some positives in Cleveland’s last-second loss, but would have preferred to extract negatives from a win.

The Browns showed some fight in rallying from a 27-3 halftime deficit, but they dug themselves too deep and dropped their 10th straight season opener. Pettine didn’t sugarcoat things when he addressed his team for the first time following a game.

“I talked about no moral victories and when you guys [media] publish the standings it’s wins and losses,” he said. “There’s no third column for moral victories. It’s something that we take some lessons from, some hard ones.”

A major issue during the first half, which Pettine described as “a comedy of errors,” was that the Browns didn’t tackle well. Pittsburgh’s running backs darted around or through Cleveland’s defenders. Pettine said the coaching staff should take some of the blame and his assistants need to do more in practice to work on tackling.

“It is one of the most difficult things to be able to work on because just for obvious reasons you’re not going to tackle live to the ground in practice,” he said. “But it seems when our guys are into it and focus we tackle better. We’ve got to make sure our minds are right.”

One of the positives to come out of the loss was starting quarterback Brian Hoyer, who brought the Browns back after halftime. With speculation rampant that Pettine would turn to rookie quarterback Johnny Manziel at the first sign of trouble, Hoyer displayed some of the qualities he showed last year while going 3-0 before suffering a season-ending injury.

Pettine praised some of Hoyer’s passes, including a touchdown to speedy wideout Travis Benjamin, but said the QB also missed some potentially positive plays.

“There were some throws that, he’d be the first one to tell you, he would want to have over again — a couple he threw low,” Pettine said.

Perhaps Hoyer’s best connection came at halftime, when he and a few other veterans challenged their teammates to keep fighting.