LONDON — Cornerback Denzel Ward — the Warden — the Browns lockdown cornerback who’s revered by the top wide receivers in the NFL, blamed himself for the gamewinnig touchdown pass to receiver Jordan Addison with 25 seconds left in the Browns’ 21-17 loss to the Vikings.
It was a dagger into the heart of the Browns, who took a 17-14 lead with 3:05 left in the third quarter on a Dillon Gabriel TD pass to David Njoku, and hung onto it until Addison’s 12-yard TD catch in the right front corner of the end zone.
“Yeah, we were in Cover 2 and I’ve got to reroute the guy inside and not put it so wide for the safety,” Ward said on his way out of the locker room after the game. “So I take full accountability for that. And yeah, just got to finish and execute better once it gets down to the last seconds.”
Cover 2 is a zone defense with five underneath players and two deep safeties. Addison lined up on the right and ran a corner route, slipping past Ward and corraling the ball at the front corner before safety Ronnie Hickman could reach him.
Addison, who benched for the first quarter of the game for missing a walk-through this week, made the play of the game to send the Browns back across the pond at 1-4. The Vikings, behind backup quarterback Carson Wentz, improved to 3-2.
“Yeah, it’s always frustrating when you don’t come away with the win,” Ward said. “We’ve just got to go watch the tape now and learn from it and be better in the future.”
After sitting out the entire first quarter, Addison, the Vikings first round pick in 2023, finished with 5 of 6 targets for 41 yards, including the gamewinning TD. Ironically, all five of his catches came in the second half, including the final three plays of the gamewinning drive.
“He missed a walkthrough this week,” O’Connell told reporters in London. “Those types of things aren’t in alignment with our standards and (I) wanted to make sure he was held accountable for that. But at the same time he knows that. I thought he handled it professionally. He spoke with the team to let them know that whenever I gave him the opportunity to go in the game, they could count on him, and he makes the game-winning catch.”
He certainly made up for it on that final drive, crushing the Browns’ souls with that last-minute catch.
2022 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Justin Jefferson also got hot in the second half to finish with 7 catches on 11 targets for 123 yards, including a 21-yarder to the Browns’ 27 on the gamewinning drive.
“He caught some balls in the zones,” Ward said. “He showed up when it counted in the last minutes of the game and we’ve just got to finish and get the ball out.”
Wentz also got hot in the second half after the Browns shut him down in the first half, going 18 of 22 for 163 yards and the TD in the second half after only 7 of 12 for 73 in the first half. The second-half outburst came after he suffered a left shoulder injury on a big hit by rookie Carson Schwesinger, and left the field late in the first half. He came back out with a sleeve on the left shoulder, and put on a passing clinic.
“Yeah, he came in and got the win for those guys,” Ward said. “So much respect to him.”
The loss will have the Browns doing some soul-searching to figure out where they go from here at 1-4 and playoff hopes fading fast.
“Yeah, that’s where we’re at right now and we’ve got to own it and try to work our way back,” Ward said. “We’ve just got to keep working and try to find a way to get a win.”
Cornerback Greg Newsome II, who helped hold Jefferson to 3 of 6 targets for 38 yards in the first half, pinned the loss on the defense, which had a chance to close out the game when Wentz took over at his 20 with 3:05 remaining. Instead, they let him march 80 yards in 10 plays, and find Addison for the gamewinner.
“That’s on us as a defense,” Newsome, who was questionable for the game with a hamstring injury, said. “We got the lead, last drive, that’s what we asked for and we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain. So definitely sucks to play such a good game to not finish it at the end.”
Newsome pinned it more on the Browns’ top-ranked defense than Wentz’ hot hand in the second half.
“Yeah, it’s on us,” he said. “Like I said, we had a lot of plays out there that we should have made that we didn’t make and we gave them one. So we’ve got to find a way to close that football game.”
Winning his fair share of the contested balls vs. Jefferson, Newsome felt they did a great job on him when they were in their usual man-to-man coverage.
‘If you go watch the tape when we were in man, he was not open,” Newsome said. “So yeah, he’s definitely a great receiver, but I mean a lot of those, he caught a 50-50 ball in man, and if you watch the whole tape, he’s not open. He’s a good receiver though.”
At 1-4, where do they go from here?
“Keep grinding,” he said. “That’s all you can do. That’s all you can ask for is just to keep trying to find a way to win. And I think if we continue to practice hard, continue to stay together, I think we’ll find a way to win. It’s a long, long season. Obviously we started off bad, but the season’s not over, so we just got to find a way to keep going.”
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