NFL

Cleveland Searching for Answers After Second-Half Collapse

Posted Sep 14, 2009 2:15PM By Nancy Gay (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Browns, NFL Analysis

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CLEVELAND -- If one play defined the Browns' opening day defeat Sunday on their home turf, it was when Vikings All-Pro running back Adrian Peterson sliced through Cleveland's defense with maddening ease on a 64-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

Peterson tore through six Browns tackles, eluded several more and exposed Cleveland's revamped 3-4 scheme under new defensive coordinator Rob Ryan as a true work in progress.

"You saw it. I'll give the man credit. He took some tough licks throughout the whole game and kept with it until he broke some," Browns nose tackle Shaun Rogers said of Peterson, who had 25 rushing yards in the first half and 155 in the final two quarters.

At halftime, Peterson received an IV to treat dehydration, which he said helped his second-half burst.

Then again, the Browns defense – much like Cleveland's offense – seemed hell-bent on squandering a nicely played 13-10 halftime advantage and letting it collapse into a 34-20 loss. How striking was the difference?

The first-half pressure by the Browns' front seven forced two Brett Favre sacks and harassed the Vikings quarterback enough to limit Minnesota to 57 passing yards.

Browns quarterback Brady Quinn also seemed more poised in the first half, completing 7 of 11 passes for 47 yards. Receiver/return man Joshua Cribbs broke loose on a 67-yard punt return down the left sideline straight into the end zone. The coverage teams were solid; the running game, behind Jamal Lewis' 32 first-half yards, was poking holes through the Vikings' vaunted wall of Pat and Kevin Williams.

After the break, everything suddenly went south for the Browns, and new coach Eric Mangini was absolutely disgusted by the turnaround. Quinn lost a fumble and threw an interception, leading to 10 Minnesota points. The Cleveland defense grew careless in its handling of Peterson, rookie receiver Percy Harvin and Favre, who completed 14 of 21 passes for 110 yards and one touchdown.
"We can't play a half of football, and that's what we did. We played a half of football."
-- Eric Mangini
Favre was sacked four times, but the accomplishment did little to ease the memory of Peterson running roughshod through the Browns' defense on that crushing 64-yard scoring romp.

"It's not something I haven't seen multiple, multiple times from (Peterson)," Mangini said. "If you let him get on the edge, you've got a problem. Once he gets on the edge and into the secondary, you don't leverage him, you've got a problem.

"If you don't wrap a player like him up, it's not going to go for six more yards. It's going to go for whatever it went for."

Mangini's new team may be loaded with talent but it is anything but consistent, and that reflected badly on everyone wearing a Cleveland uniform in Week 1.

"We can't play a half of football, and that's what we did. We played a half of football," said Mangini, barely stopping to take a breath. "You can look at what we can do when we play good football. When we play complementary, when we don't turn the ball over, when we have gap integrity in the defense, when we tackle well, when we play well on special teams and don't have huge shifts in field position, when you don't have multiple penalties, that's what it can be."

Quinn agreed that there was a palpable change in Browns' momentum from the first half to the second, and he emphasized that his team cannot succeed if it doesn't play well all four quarters.

"It's hard to pinpoint right now. I think that change was an accurate assessment of what happened. We didn't do the things we needed to, and personally, I didn't take care of the ball like I needed to," Quinn said. "It's going to hurt you in the end."

Tags: Adrian+Peterson, Brady+Quinn, Cleveland+Browns, ClevelandBrowns, Eric+Mangini, Shaun+Rogers

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