Cleveland Browns: 3 Overreactions to Week 1 loss vs Chiefs
By Nick Swanson
The Cleveland Browns lost a close game to the defending AFC champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, in Week 1 of the 2021 NFL season. There were good and bad things that happened during the game, which led to some overreactions.
The Cleveland Browns lost an absolute heartbreaking game to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
This game was primarily dominated by the Browns but Cleveland did what they’ve done historically and just completely choked away the opportunity they had to knock off the reigning AFC champions.
The first three quarters of the game was encapsulated by high end quarterback play and mostly smart coaching decisions by each team. The fourth quarter was where it fell apart for the Browns. We haven’t seen many complete and utter collapses in the Kevin Stefanski era but this has to be up there for one of the worst.
To summarize how the fourth quarter went for the Browns, on a punt, there was a low snap to Jamie Gillian who then picked it up and decided to run with it, while having enough time to still punt it away, giving the Chiefs incredible field position with around seven minutes left in the game. The Chiefs proceeded to score a quick touchdown thrown by Patrick Mahomes to star tight end Travis Kelce.
While the fourth quarter greatly overshadowed the success that the Browns saw over the previous three quarters, the game wasn’t entirely negative. We saw the creativity of Kevin Stefanski at work early with the Jarvis Landry rushing touchdown.
The play of Baker Mayfield was very good, for the most part, and his decision making was on point. The defense was the definition of a “bend don’t break” defense for most of the game and they made a couple of huge stops that helped the offense tremendously. The emergence of a new face on offense and the revival of one who looked to be lost, the offense was clicking on every level.
There are a lot of thing to look forward to with this Browns team but right now it’s time to look back on the performance against the Chiefs and overreact to what happened.