CLEVELAND — The Browns are no strangers to finding ways to pull out a win this season. The team has fought through adversity, numerous injuries, and deficits that seemed too big to overcome. That remained true Sunday against the Bears.
On a cold and rainy day off the shores of Lake Erie, Cleveland's offense took some time to warm up. The first four possessions saw the Browns punt each time, only able to run a total of 16 plays, stalling each drive.
The Browns' defense, on the other hand, came out of the gates hot. With two straight 3-and-outs to open up the game, the defense forced the Bears to punt just as often. But the Browns did what they knew they needed to avoid and turned the ball over. Quarterback Joe Flacco threw an interception that led to the Bears' first points of the day, a touchdown, after taking the ball away in their red zone.
However, the Browns answered back with a touchdown of their own after a 12-play, 84-yard drive.
The Browns seemed on a roll, all tied up going into the half. But with another Flacco interception early in the third quarter, a pick-six by Tremaine Edmunds, the Browns fell behind once again.
Chicago held a two-score lead through the fourth quarter, and the Browns had a tall task ahead. With a third interception from Flacco, Sunday seemed like it wasn't going to go the Browns' way offensively despite a strong performance from the defense.
But the resilient Browns wouldn't go down without a fight—including Flacco, a 16-year veteran who knows good and well that the game isn't over until the clock says zero.
"Believe me, part of you wants to crawl into a hole somewhere and hide from everybody, but you can't do that, especially somebody like me. I've been in this league a long time and you've seen so much happen. You just have to keep your eyes on what's next," Flacco admitted after the game. "You have to continue to look forward and continue to have faith that your teammates are going to get themselves in the right positions for you to get the ball to them. It might not happen. Today it just happened to work out for us. Like I said, I don't think enough can be said about how well our defense played with all the turnovers that we had and the little amount of points they let up."
After kicker Dustin Hopkins hit a 33-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter, the Browns made it a one-score game. A full quarter ahead, it was time for the Browns to show off their resiliency.
The defense stepped up and forced the Bears to punt on their next two possessions. Then, Flacco turned his game around with a late-game 51-yard pass in a tight window to Amari Cooper, who kept his feet inbounds as he pushed up the sideline and into the end zone to tie it up 17-17.
Another forced punt by the Browns' defense gave the Browns the ball back with just 1:50 on the clock.
Flacco hit tight end David Njoku for a big 31-yard gain, and a few plays later, hit him again for 34 yards. Njoku fought for extra yards all day, and on his final catches, he even tried to hurdle the defender. '
“I be telling myself to chill like in my head like, ‘Yo, you, you can't be doing certain things anymore. But I don't know it's all instinct from there on out," Njoku laughed.
After driving down the field, it came down to a Hopkins field goal for the fourth time this season. From 34 yards out, he nailed it.
"I’m just thankful for another opportunity and I’m really grateful for, where you all are standing, for Corey [Bojorquez] and Charley [Hughlett]. All year I’ve gotten really good looks. Not once have I had to think about that, or is the ball not right and I had to power through. My looks at every opportunity I’ve had have been awesome," Hopkins said.
The go-ahead field goal put the Browns on top 20-17, but the Bears had 32 seconds left to make something happen.
A five-play drive had fans on the edge of their seats. You could hear a pin drop inside Cleveland Browns Stadium as Bears quarterback Justin Fields had one last shot—a Hail Mary attempt from Cleveland's 45-yard line.
And the fans weren't the only ones holding their breaths.
“I blacked out. I don’t know," head coach Kevin Stefanski joked after the game.
"Oh my gosh, yeah, that was, man, because the crowd, generally when the ball touches someone's hands and you're in the home crowd, they're cheering. But when the ball touched whoever's hands, it was so cluttered up that you couldn't really see; the crowd didn't really respond, as if the play didn't go our way. But one of those guys on the other team said that he caught the ball and then he didn't catch the ball. So man, that would've been crazy," wide receiver Amari Cooper recalled.
As for tight end David Njoku, his reaction was perhaps the most intense.
“Damn near **** myself dawg. But luckily our defense made an exceptional play, sealed the game and that was it," he laughed.
And the defense did.
Fields' deep pass went right into the hands of wide receiver Darnelle Mooney in the end zone. That would have been game. But the ball popped out, and he kicked it into the arms of safety D'Anthony Bell, who got the interception and sealed the Browns win with time expired.
"Well, I just seen everybody jump up. So my first instinct was, we've been watching plays on the same thing, so my first instinct was try to run to the front and make sure nobody else caught it. So I was going to try to dive on the ground to stop him from catching it. It popped up into my hands. So lucky catch, I guess," Bell said.
Lucky or not, the Browns pulled off the down-to-the-wire win. Sunday's victory over the Bears marks the team's fifth time with a game-winning score in the final two minutes of play this season.
With nine wins on the season and the playoffs in sight, the team will look to keep their victorious ways alive—even if it's down to the wire and even if fans (and everyone on the team) lose some years off their lives with the stress of the final moments.
Because for the Browns, it doesn't matter to them how they win. It matters how they respond when the pressure is on.
"That's pretty much the mark of a good team because that's why they say it's not how you start, it's how you finish. Because I think anybody can come in and start off well, it's no pressure, but in the fourth quarter when it's for all the marbles, when the pressure is on, that's when you see what a team is really made of. So we've been proven to be a resilient team and we will keep it up," Cooper said.
