The Cleveland Browns pulled off a thrilling win against the Tennessee Titans this past Sunday, but their head coach is less than pleased with his defensive output.
The Cleveland Browns are 2-3 after a wild comeback victory over the Tennessee Titans, but that win doesn’t lessen the pressure on a defense that is underachieving under first year head coach Mike Pettine. The team continues to leak points and Pettine admitted that the coaching staff still hasn’t found the answer.
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“I think we have flashed brilliance at times, defensively,” Pettine said after the game, per ESPN. “Then other times we look like a bad college team. We need to get that ironed out.”
Consistency has been a big issue with the Browns. It started right away in Week 1 when they fell big early to the Pittsburgh Steelers, allowing 24 points in the first half before only allowing 3 the rest of the way in a failed comeback effort. The team did the same thing against the New Orleans Saints the next week in giving up some big drives in the middle of the game, requiring a comeback drive from Brian Hoyer and the offense.
But it was Cleveland’s Week 5 game against the struggling Titans that really exposed the ‘bad college team’ aspect of this Browns defense. The Titans seemingly racked up points at will in jumping out to a 28-3 first half lead. The Browns settled down though and shut out the Titans in the second half en route to a wild 29-28 comeback victory.
So continues the maddening experiment that is the 2014 Cleveland Browns. The team has talent on both sides of the ball, but they need to clean up their act and find consistency if they want to be taken seriously in an AFC North that is wide open for the taking. Pettine said the team can’t even think about that next step until they start paying more attention.
“We’re not going to be good until we can get those little details cleaned up,” Pettine concluded.
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