After all, they were the ones who made it possible. Hoyer threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Hawkins early in the fourth period, shortly after safety Whitner's big hit on Oakland running back Darren McFadden forced a fumble that was caught in the air by Haden and returned 34 yards. Once he hit Hawkins, Hoyer, who bounced back from the worst game of his career, headed to the bench and slapped hands with Whitner and Haden. I wanted to make sure I celebrated with those guys.
The Browns matched their win total from last season. They also dodged what would have been an historic loss. Cleveland fell at Jacksonville last week, giving the Jaguars their first win. It was hardly a perfect performance, but the Browns, held to 39 yards rushing and able to convert only 2 of 12 third downs, will take it. Ben Tate 's 5-yard run, set up by rookie quarterback Derek Carr 's fumble, put the Browns ahead with left. Hoyer finished 19 of 28 for yards and no interceptions.
He quieted the growing calls for the Browns to switch to rookie Johnny Manziel -- for at least another week. The Raiders have lost 13 straight dating to last season. After a season in which the Steelers finished last in the NFL in rushing for the first time in the Super Bowl era, the team hired a new offensive coordinator, spent a first-round pick on the top running back prospect in the draft, and re-tooled the offensive line. While those moves seemed necessary and making them all at once seemed logical, the impact of them was neither immediate nor profound.
In the first four games of this regular season, the Steelers rushed for 75, 39, 45, and 62 yards. Their first yard rushing game came on Oct. Denver at Heinz Field yards , the same afternoon when Harris recorded his first yard game as a pro yards. But even this didn't serve as a breakthrough, because there was little consistency by the units responsible for the running of the ball and even though Harris clearly was a star in the making his rushing totals were not showing steady incremental increases.
Sometimes it seemed as though the Steeles were being handled on the line of scrimmage; sometimes it seemed as though the plays called had Harris running east-west too often rather than north-south; and sometimes the downfield blocking and perimeter blocking wasn't sufficiently solid to allow Harris to get beyond the line of scrimmage before encountering multiple defenders. It almost seemed as though some of Harris' best runs gained only a couple of yards because he had to do so much fighting just to get back to the line of scrimmage.
Against the Browns on Monday night, the Steelers running game turned in its best and most productive performance of this regular season. On a night when the passing attack spent most of the game within a yard or two of the line of scrimmage, when Ben Roethlisberger completed Harris had his best day as a pro with yards rushing, a 6.
We maintained our commitment. Najee was special to be quite honest. He was better as the game wore on, the number of yards that he picked up after contact, the way he confronted would-be tacklers in an aggressive manner and in a competitive manner was helpful and inspiring to all of us.
And so I think those are some of the critical things that produced the victory. There also were a couple of changes forced on the unit by factors beyond its control. Cincinnati decided to play defense against itself last week, but the squad still came out ahead despite their 85 penalty yards. They narrowly escaped with a victory as the team sidled past the Kansas City Chiefs Meanwhile, Cleveland came up short against the Pittsburgh Steelers last Monday, falling The Bengals are now while Cleveland sits at Cincinnati has clinched a playoff berth as the current third seed in the AFC.
Cleveland has been eliminated from playoff contention. Cincinnati is expected to lose this next one by 5. However, those who like betting on the underdog should be happy to hear that they are against the spread when expected to lose.
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