PHILADELPHIA, Pa.— In the Browns’ 20-16 loss to the Eagles on Sunday, Cleveland’s 16 points came from field goals and one touchdown, which was scored by the defense. Philadelphia bounced back from its Week 4 loss to Tampa Bay, having had a bye last week before sending Cleveland to a 1-5 record.
The Browns found their way back into the game, but the little things prevailed them from winning.
Here’s how Philadelphia reacted to defeating Cleveland on Sunday:
Smith & Brown
Philadelphia’s offense is like night and day when wide receivers Devonta Smith and A.J. Brown are in the mix.
The Week 5 bye week allowed Brown to recover from a hamstring injury, and Smith to recover from his concussion. For the first time since their Week 1 win over Green Bay, quarterback Jalen Hurts had his top targets on the field.
Hurts showed his appreciation for their returns as Brown finished with six catches for 116 yards (19.3 per reception), Smith caught three passes for 64 yards (21.3 per reception), and both finished with a touchdown.
Cleveland’s defense entered Week 6 seventh-ranked in fewest passing yards allowed per game (184.4), but Hurts’ 264 passing yards Sunday came predominantly against man-to-man coverage.
The first big play was Brown’s 22-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter, one in which he wanted the ball because he noticed the defensive scheme.
“I was begging for the man, begging for the man, and fighting the emotion that was in it…(Jalen) gave me a great ball,” Brown said.
Brown only created 0.3 yards of separation between him and Cleveland’s Martin Emerson Jr., with a completion probability of 24.5%, per Next Gen Stats. Yet, Brown took Emerson with him downfield and made the play down the left sideline, and he claims he wasn’t surprised to see he was in a one-on-one situation with Emerson.
“I’m not surprised because they sprinkled it in, you know, most of the time, they started putting the system on the side and throwing it to my side,” Brown said. “But whenever I get on the way, I want the ball because, you know, I’m trying to change the game.”
Ahead of Smith’s 45-yard touchdown reception in the fourth period, he lined up in the slot left, with Cleveland’s Greg Newsome II defending him tight.
Smith’s crossing route took him toward the right side of the field, and while Newsome was behind him at first, he suddenly got caught up in traffic as teammate D’Anthony Bell was defending Philadelphia’s Jack Stoll, who was running a crossing route the other way.
The mesh helped free up Smith, and he took it all the way to put Philadelphia up, 20-13.
Smith said it’s what he expected.
“We knew it was man (coverage), so you know, a perfect ‘man’ play,” Smith said. “Especially when you’re playing a team that you know is going to play man. You know this team is going to play man, so you have to take advantage of it.”
The final blow was Brown’s 40-yard catch after the two-minute warning, where he blew by Greg Newsome II and made a terrific catch to place Philadelphia in the red zone and force Cleveland to use its final timeout.
“It’s an alert in my mind, yeah,” Hurts said. “You alert something, it always has the potential to be number one. That’s not necessarily the guy that its drawn up to go to, but everybody’s accessible.”
Eagles defense
With a little under eight minutes left in the game, Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson finally eclipsed 100 passing yards passing with a 35-yard reception by Jerry Jeudy.
The Eagles found ways to make Watson uncomfortable in the pocket while keeping the Cleveland offense from scoring a touchdown.
“It meant a lot (because) we prepared hard during the week (and) trying to eliminate mistakes,” Eagles rookie cornerback Quinyon Mitchell said.
Watson threw a deep ball to Jeudy towards the latter part of the first half, and it was nearly intercepted by Philadelphia. Both C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Mitchell read the play and went up for the pick at the same time, eventually bouncing into each other while in air.
“We’re just two competitors trying to get the ball, that’s it, we just went to the sideline and laughed it off,” Mitchell said after the game. “(C.J.’s) a ballhawk, so he gonna go for the ball, and I’m gonna for the ball.”
The Eagles kept Browns receiver Amari Cooper to 42 yards, and he was the Browns’ leading receiver on the day.
The defense sacked Watson five times and forced multiple throwaways.
Milton Williams, the defensive tackle who had one of their five sacks on the day, talked about the feeling going in.
“We was just executing the whole game, you know they got that blocked field going to end of the half. So it’s like, ‘Dang,’ I mean we was feeling bad,” Williams said. “But it’s like you really look at it. They had three points and we were doing our job, (we just) got to keep executing.”
They would do just that.
