Freddie Kitchens sure didn’t sound like a man whose team had just won a football game. The Cleveland Browns coach could not get past the litany of penalties, mistakes and missed opportunities in the narrow preseason win in Indianapolis over the Colts.
“I think we made too many mistakes,” Kitchens said with disgust in his postgame press conference. “You’re not going to win football games with the amount of mistakes that we made, the penalties that we made, the missed tackles that we had, missed opportunities because of the penalties. You’re not going to win very many games like that.”
The Browns had 13 accepted penalties, with three others declined. Several defenders missed tackling opportunities, notably rookie Mack Wilson twice blowing chances for tackles behind the line on the same drive. There were dropped passed (Demetrius Harris), missed blocking assignments (Kareem Hunt and more Demetrius Harris) and missed field goals (Austin Seibert and Greg Joseph).
Noen of that made Kitchens particularly happy after the game.
“We’ve got to do a better job of making the plays that are there to be made,” Kitchens said. That’s a pretty good summation of the Browns play in the Indianapolis exhibition.
