Pat Shurmur says injured Colt McCoy gave the Browns their best chance to win in the fourth quarter against PIttsburgh. It sure didn't look like it, though.
BEREA, Ohio -- "You play to win the game," an old coach named Herman Edwards once said.
He meant when the ESPN oompah band isn't around and when the playoffs are unlikely. Edwards' observation is the heart of the NFL's "on any given Sunday" (or Thursday) mantra.
That might be a difficult sell to anyone who saw Thursday night's Browns loss at Pittsburgh, however.
The Browns seemed to have knocked Ben Roethlisberger out of the game late in the first half in Pittsburgh. But he came back, like the trouble that has persistently found him off the field.
If the Browns are ever good again, if this game were in the playoffs or for a playoff berth, it would be remembered for Roethlisberger's emergence as the next Willie Mays, John Elway, or Michael Jordan. They were great players who broke the hearts of valiant Cleveland teams. The NFL Network's Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock were practically playing a fife and drum in tribute to Big Ben.
The Browns' Colt McCoy was courageous, too. The Browns trailed, 7-3, in the fourth quarter when McCoy was blasted backward and left limp on the grass by another of James Harrison's killer shots to the head on Browns players. In the past two years, he has put Mohamed Massaquoi, Josh Cribbs and McCoy out of games, although the latter only briefly.
But McCoy had also run out of the pocket on the play. He was a ballcarrier then, a threat to run before flipping a short pass to Montario Hardesty. Harrison's helmet-to-helmet shot was obviously a penalty, but there is also the question of what he was supposed to do? Back off? Brake his momentum on a potential stop against a player who had scrambled to the lip of the goal-line earlier in the game?
After the game, coach Pat Shurmur said McCoy began exhibiting symptoms of a concussion. McCoy's father and his former high school coach, Brad McCoy, criticized the Browns' medical staff and coaches Friday for putting his son back in the game. Shurmur said if Colt McCoy hadn't been cleared to play, he never would have been sent back in. Frankly, this will do McCoy no favors in the Browns' organization.
Backup quarterback Seneca Wallace entered the game upon McCoy's departure. His second play was a pretty 13-yard pass to Evan Moore that carried to the Steelers' 5. It might have been the best pass of the day by a Browns quarterback. Even McCoy's first-drive completions, on the intermediate routes he usually spurns, necessitated twisting, turning, leaping catches by his receivers.
Now, one pass does not a season or even a comeback make. But Wallace to Moore looked like Steve Young to Jerry Rice, compared with what occurred when McCoy returned to the game on first-and-goal at the 5.
Maybe McCoy wanted back in because of his competitiveness. Pittsburgh had put Big Ben with his bad ankle back in, after all. Maybe McCoy also knows his future with the Browns is on the line in the last weeks of the season. Maybe the Browns also wanted to check under heat the Petri dish McCoy has become to see if anything but mediocrity buds were growing there.
Shurmur said, after the quarterback passed a quick series of sideline tests designed to detect a concussion, McCoy told him, "I'm ready to roll."
Two other Browns suffered concussions in the Pittsburgh game -- Owen Marecic and Ben Watson. Neither returned. That can be read as proof of the Browns' caution, or of McCoy's ability to convince those who wanted to believe him.
Wallace is a better scrambler than McCoy, he had been spared the beating McCoy had taken and he was fresher. These points became issues because McCoy looked anything but ready to roll.
On first down, Harrison, in hot pursuit again, swatted at McCoy's heels, tripping him up and leading to an obvious intentional-grounding call after McCoy's underhanded pass was aimed at no one in particular.
From the 16 on third down after the penalty, McCoy stood in the pocket, with the play well-blocked, and threw late and short to Mohamed Massaquoi in the corner of the end zone. Shurmur said Massaquoi had to play better defense and try to knock down the ball on the throw. In any event, Pittsburgh's William Gay plucked it like a peeled grape. Gone was the last chance for Cleveland.
Said Shurmur, when asked if McCoy was the best chance to win, "There is no doubt in my mind. That doesn't mean I don't have confidence in Seneca."
Experts in medical ethics can debate McCoy's fitness to play after he was leveled. Shurmur can try to have it both ways with his quarterbacks.
Strategically, in their equivalent to the Ohio State-Michigan game, when a victory would have made a miserable season less so, when their starter had just been savagely belted out of the game, Seneca Wallace gave the Browns the best chance to win.