Browns should have won

Ladies and gentlemen, the Browns team we saw in the early part of the season is back. Remember how it seemed like every week, they'd hold tough the whole game before blowing it in the end? They did that last week against the Jets, and they did it yesterday against the Jaguars -- who were trying their hardest to lose that game.

The Jags turned the ball over on five consecutive possessions in the second half, and the Browns only managed to turn that into 10 points -- seven of which came on Abram Elam's touchdown on a fumble recovery. The Browns' offense only converted one of those turnovers into points, and even then, all they got was a field goal.

Apart from the turnovers, Jacksonville really outplayed us in this one, especially in that second half. Had the Browns defense been a little better, they'd have forced a few three-and-outs instead of having to get the ball via turnover. The Jaguars were moving the ball pretty much at will, and you had to just know that if they could hold onto the ball, they were going to put some more points on the board. That's what wound up happening, of course, when Maurice Jones-Drew scored two plays after his 75-yard catch and run down to the 1/2-yard line. Joe Haden's touchdown-delaying tackle on that play just gave the Jags a chance to run nearly another minute off the clock, giving Colt McCoy just over a minute to work with on the Browns' last drive.

And McCoy and the Browns' offense weren't doing dookie. They finally started moving the ball after the Jaguars tied it at 17, but McCoy pulled up lame on his 18-yard run that set up the field goal that gave the Browns a short-lived 20-17 lead. And they got some nice gains on the ill-fated final drive too, but it was too little, too late.

Incidentally, I haven't heard anyone else mention this, but even if Ben Watson had caught McCoy's pass around the 5 on the Browns' last offensive play, the Browns would still have lost. He was falling down as he tried to make the catch, there were less than 10 seconds left, the Browns were out of timeouts, and there was no way they could get up to the line of scrimmage in time to spike the ball and stop the clock.

Well, as I said a week ago after the loss to the Jets, the goal for this season was improvement, and we've definitely seen that. So I can't complain too much. But it would be nice to pull out a game or two like these.