A win for the punt team

Thanks to Dave Zastudil and the punt team, our Cleveland Browns are winless no longer. The Browns' 6-3 win over the Buffalo Bills was due in part to a strong effort from the defense, in part to a strong effort by Jamal Lewis, and in a much larger part to the most outstanding overall effort I can remember off the top of my head from a punt team.

Billy Cundiff's 18-yard field goal with 23 seconds left in the game was the decisive play, but it came after the punt team got the offense the ball at the Bills' 16. The play was more a mistake by Buffalo punt returner Roscoe Parrish than it was a great play by the punt team, but still, once Parrish muffed it, Blake Costanzo was right there to fall on it. This followed a 57-yard punt by Zastudil.

The Browns did a lot of punting in this game, and the punts produced the following results:

1. First quarter: Zastudil punts 25 yards, Parrish fair catches at 17. Sure, it wasn't a strong punt, but it gave Buffalo the ball inside the 20, and the coverage was good enough to force the fair catch.
2. Zastudil punts 31 yards, ball goes out of bounds at the 11. No complaints there; Bills were given bad field position.
3. Zastudil punts 54 yards, Parrish fields at the 25 and returns it 22 yards before Nick Sorensen pushed him out of bounds at the 47. Not a great result, but a fine punt that results in a respectable 32-yard net.
4. Second quarter: This is where the fun really started. Zastudil punts 44 yards, and Mike Adams first touches it at the 2, then feels his momentum pulling him into the end zone, so he hands the ball to Josh Cribbs, who is safely outside it. Buffalo ball at the 2.
5. Third quarter: Zastudil punts 42 yards to the Buffalo 13, where the ball goes out of bounds. You'll take that every time.
6. Zastudil's next punt was the punt team's second-finest moment, after the muff recovery at the end of the game. Zastudil punts 43 yards, and Parrish receives it at the Bills' 42. Surrounded by Browns, he tries to get some space by running sideways -- and backwards. Unable to find an opening, he continues to go backwards, the Browns' special teamers in hot pursuit. Raymond Ventrone finally tackles Parrish at the Buffalo 27, for a "return" of -15. The net was 58 yards. Like the fourth-quarter play, this was only made possible because of a serious error by Parrish, but still, give the Browns' punt team credit for making him pay.
7. Fourth quarter: With the game hanging in the balance, Zastudil and his mates continued to turn in some fine work. Ventrone downs Zastudil's 45-yard punt inside the 1, setting up a possible safety situation. (There was no safety, of course, but that's how safeties happen.)
8. Zastudil's 45-yard punt gets the Buffalo offense starting at the 4.
9. Zastudil's ninth punt of the day is muffed by Parrish and recovered by Costanzo.

The box score will say that Zastudil only averaged 42.7 yards per punt, and that's true. But on nine punts, he pinned the Bills inside the 20 on seven; and inside the 5 on three. And the punt coverage guys sure earned their stripes, rescuing two punts before they went into the end zone and only allowing one return for positive yardage.

Derek Anderson was awful -- but he wasn't as bad as the box score indicates. For the game, he went 2-for-17 for 23 yards, which is just pathetic. But the Browns receivers bear the lion's share of the responsibility for that, as they dropped at least eight passes that they should have had. Anderson definitely made some bad throws, but he also made a whole lot more than two good ones.

I don't know what the NFL record is for fewest completed passes by a winning team, but I'll bet the Browns came close today. There probably were a few who completed zero passes in the early days of the league, when there was very little passing, but I'll bet it's been at least 40 years since a team has won without completing at least three. I'm sure someone will have looked that up very soon, and I look forward to seeing what they find.