And that village took several awful factors, tossed them into a bowl, stirred strongly, and the result was a 32-28 loss for the Cleveland Browns against the visiting Seattle Seahawks in Cleveland.
Nick Chubb rushed for 122 yards and two touchdowns while Baker Mayfield threw for 249 yards and a touchdown along with a rushing touchdown, but threw three interceptions on the afternoon.
The Browns will take a 2-4 record into the off week before traveling to Foxboro and the New England Patriots.
Brownie Bits
1) Let us start with the obvious- the officiating was awful.
Missing several calls that could have made a huge difference in the game, they were milk that had been left out in the sun for a week bad.
Jarvis Landry's touchdown run that was called a fumble was bad.
Yes, Landry fumbled forward, but watch the replay- the football is in Landry's hand against a Seattle defenders hip and where is that hip?
Standing on the goal line!
The Browns would not score on that drive, so you take six points away in a game lost by four.
2) An even worse call was Jarvis Landry being called for a blindside block on a play that
A) he never hit the player from the blindside and
B) Landry was bracing himself for the hit from the Seattle player.
That call didn't impact the game, but a brutally terrible call.
3) The final call was borderline, but still inept.
Morgan Burnett charged into the backfield against a scrambling Russell Wilson, who threw the ball away, but Burnett's reach and takedown were ruled to be a horsecollar tackle.
The standard for a horsecollar tackle had been extended in the offseason from the neck roll to the nameplate and even though I didn't think that Burnett actually grasped and ripped Wilson down by the nameplate, I could see the call, it was close.
What I take issue with is the time taken to decide the call as the teams were in their huddle when the flag was thrown- if you aren't sure for that amount of time, then the flag shouldn't have been thrown.
4) All of that said, there were plenty of reasons for the Browns can blame no one but themselves for the loss and let's start with Freddie Kitchens himself.
The glaring mistake- with the clock running down and the ball ready to be snapped, an instant before the play ran (at full speed), Kitchens threw the challenge flag on the above Landry play.
As noted above the mistake by the officials in not ruling that Landry broke the plane aside, Nick Chubb cruised through the Seattle defense into the end zone, only to see the play invalidated.
The referees botched the call and Kitchens decided to go for the seven points again.
I didn't have a problem with that and had the Browns kicked a field goal instead, it would not have impacted the final result.
Now, I know the Chubb play worked well, but the Seahawks saw it and was waiting for it to be run again.
Kitchens obliged and the Seahawks stopped Chubb short of the goal line (They grabbed his facemask without a call as well) and took possession of the ball, leaving the Browns with nothing.
5) Another Freddie Kitchens mistake came at the end of the half when the Browns could have taken their time, scored a touchdown, drained time from the clock so Seattle had little time left and led either 28-12 or at least 23-12.
Instead, Kitchens pushed the offense (later Kitchens was quoted as saying he wanted to score quickly, so they could stop Seattle and score again ) to score quickly and Baker Mayfield was then intercepted.
The interception allowed the Seahawks to march down the field and score (the Browns stopped the two-point conversion) to cut the lead to 20-18 at the half.
6) And let's chat about one Baker Mayfield, who threw three interceptions and is now the league's 34th ranked passer in a league that employs 32 starting quarterbacks.
Mayfield's eleven interceptions in six games are the most for a Browns quarterback since the immortal Paul McDonald in 1983 and despite the occasional reasons for those interceptions, the numbers do not lie.
7) Mayfield does deserve some credit though for gritting the game out through an injured hip that sent him briefly to the locker room without missing a play and you could see that the hip was hindering him to the point that I'm not sure he could make a 25-yard throw.
I can criticize his play, but not his toughness.
8) Having given those points, Mayfield defenders will say that those interceptions should have been caught and maybe in one case that's correct in the final interception off the hands of Dontrell Hilliard, but the other two?
All on Mayfield as the first one was a pass that was closer to the defender than Odell Beckham, the second in the end zone to Jarvis Landry was way too high, Landry did a great job with two players also leaping for the ball to even get a finger on it and the third did bounce off the hands of Dontrell Hilliard, but was behind the running back and even though it should have been caught, the pass wasn't a good one.
Jason Lloyd in the Athletic put it best- "Baker Mayfield can still have a wonderful NFL career and still be lousy right now" and lousy he has been except in the win over Baltimore.
9) Special teams hadn't hurt the Browns this season for the most part, but Austin Seibert missed an extra point and Jamie Gillen had a punt blocked.
Siebert had an excuse with the windy conditions, and punts being blocked usually are on the men blocking more than on the punter, but still, issues are issues.
10) Nick Chubb finished with over 100 yards and two touchdowns on twenty rushes against Seattle, but it wasn't all good news as Chubb fumbled after catching a swing pass and there was the fourth-down stop at the goal , but still it's pretty plain to see right now that the Browns are a much better teams with the offense running through Nick Chubb right now rather than through Baker Mayfield's passing woes.
11) Odell Beckham finished with six catches for over 100 yards and the Browns made getting the football to Beckham a major part of the game plan.
While it was nice to see Beckham play well, there still seems to be some hitches in the Mayfield to Beckman connection as those six catches were made of eleven targets.
I'd like to see the percentage of completions be much higher.
12) The offensive line has gotten plenty of criticism, for the most part, this season, but they played pretty well in this game.
Baker Mayfield wasn't sacked and the game by Nick Chubb speaks for itself, but they didn't get much of a push when Nick Chubb was stopped and that play meant the game.
13) 2-4 at the off week isn't great and going to New England makes 2-5 likely.
The season isn't over and I think the best is yet to come, but even against weaker competition, a nine-game winning streak isn't something that you can bank on.
I didn't even write much about the defense, but time is short.
Back later with the Devils afternoon matinee' against the Florida Panthers/
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