Browns lose to Bengals, 23-20

October 4th, 2009 at 10:13 pm by Displaced Cleveland Fan

Braylon Edwards - Cleveland BrownsFollowing the Brady Quinn era that lasted a whole 10 quarters, the Browns played their first full game of the new Derek Anderson era against the Bengals.

I freely admit that I am a Brady Quinn supporter over Derek Anderson. I think he has the potential to be a better long-term solution, despite his terrible start to this season. Anderson is a solid guy to have as a backup QB, but as a starter will likely remain somewhere between average and mediocre.

That being said, DA did have a better game today than BQ has this season. The Browns came close to winning this game, going into overtime. But in overtime, they had three chances on offense to win the game, and all three times they had to punt. Unfortunately the defense couldn’t hold on for a tie and the Bengals kicked a field goal with 7 seconds left for a 23-20 win.

There were some positives in this game though:

  • Derek Anderson threw 26/48 (54%) for 269 yards, 1 touchdown, and only 1 interception. Not great. But much better than his 3 interceptions in the second half last week. He also rushed for 1 touchdown.
  • Jerome Harrison did have a costly fumble. But other than that, he had a solid game - 29 carries for 121 yards.
  • Mohamed Massaqoi had 8 catches for 148 yards.
  • Josh Cribbs had returned 3 kickoffs for 103 yards and 6 punts for 120 yards. That’s 223 total return yards, almost as many passing yards as Carson Palmer had.
  • Big Shaun Rogers blocked two kicks - a field goal in the first quarter, and an extra point attempt following the Bengals last touchdown in the fourth quarter to force overtime.

But despite the positives, the Browns are now 0-4. Maybe next week we’ll see if the team really did improve this week or if they go back to losing badly.

-dcf

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Cleveland Browns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Browns lose to Bengals, 23-20”

  1. Displaced Cleveland Fan » Blog Archive » NFL Week 4 Notes Says:
    October 5th, 2009 at 6:36 am

    [...] around the league that I thought were worth noting. You can read my recap of the Browns week 4 game here. Who’s the best quarterback in the NFL? Tom Brady? Drew Brees? Eli [...]

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