Written by Thomas Moore

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The final result was one that many (most?) Cleveland Browns fans expected.

It was the journey to that result that was a surprise.

The Browns dropped the opening game of the 2012 NFL season to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, 17-16, the franchise’s 13th loss in 14 Week 1 games dating back to 1999.

Philadelphia’s Michael Vick delivered the winning score when he hit Clay Harbor with a four-yard touchdown pass with 1:18 left in the game. The play culminated a 16-play, 91-yard drive by the Eagles.

The Browns had one final chance, but on first down from their own 30, Brandon Weeden’s deep pass for Mohamed Massaquoi was high and was intercepted by Philadelphia’s Kurt Coleman to end any hopes the Browns had of making a comeback.

“Obviously it is disappointing to lose, and there are no moral victories,” coach Pat Shurmur said. “We played an outstanding football team today. The first week loss is only fatal if the guys in that room let it be. For our defense to get five turnovers is outstanding, but for us to punch in just three field goals is not good, we all know that.”

There are plenty of takeaways from the game, starting with the play of Weeden, who looked like a rookie quarterback making his first NFL start (as well as a quarterback that did not get enough work in the preseason).

On the Browns first possession, Weeden completed the first NFL pass he threw by hitting Massaquoi with a 24-yard pass; that would pretty much be the highlight of Weeden’s day. For the game, Weeden was 12-of-35 for 118 yards, fumbled twice, threw four interceptions, was sacked twice and finished with a quarterback rating of 5.1.

There were also more than a few throws you know Weeden would like to have back, primarily a first-quarter pass where he overthrew a wide open Massaquoi in the end zone.

In other words, it was one heck of a debut for the 28-year-old out of Oklahoma State.

“I take a lot of pride in playing better than that,” Weeden said in published reports. “Our defense gave us every chance to win and offensively, myself included, took away from that. I’m down right now.

“I’ve had games where I haven’t played as well, but I felt like I gave my team a chance to win it. Today there were times I didn’t really do that. That’s the part that kind of gets me the most.”

We knew Weeden would struggle at times against the Eagles, who have one of the best defenses in the NFL, but we didn’t think he would look that bad. But, as they say, he has no where to go but up.

“I did not see a guy who was starry eyed; I did see a guy who can play better, absolutely,” Shurmur said. “They are an outstanding defense but we need to do a better job of running the football.”

Speaking of running the football, fellow rookie Trent Richardson looked like a running back that had missed the entire preseason, rushing for 39 yards on 19 carries (a 2.1 average) with a long run of nine yards.

The high point of Richardson’s day came in the second quarter on his nine-yard run. He lowered his head into Coleman at the end of the run, sending the defender’s helmet flying several yards. After the hit, Coleman spent time on the bench being worked on by Philadelphia’s trainers.

“That’s just how I play football,” Richardson told The Beacon Journal. “I didn’t know his helmet was going to come off. I didn’t even know it came off until I got to the sidelines and saw the replay. It was a good feeling making somebody’s helmet come off while they’re trying to tackle me.”

Those are the kind of hits that will quickly turn Richardson into a crowd favorite in Cleveland (he puts a hit like that on Pittsburgh’s Troy Polamalu and they may put up a Richardson statue outside the stadium), but his production has to be better than 2.1 yards per rush.

“He’ll play better next week,” Shurmur told The Beacon Journal. “That’s a competitor. We had to put a leash on him to get him out of there. He won a couple times getting back in there. That’s what you want from a guy that plays that position. He’s going to play a lot of great football around here for a long time.”

In spite of the troubles on offense – they were outgained 456 yards to 210 – the Browns had a chance to win the game thanks to the defense, which pressured Vick all day long.

The Browns sacked Vick twice, recovered a fumble and picked off Vick four times, the biggest being a D’Qwell Jackson interception in the fourth quarter that the linebacker returned 27 yards for a touchdown, giving the Browns a 16-10 lead.

The defense almost made one last play to pull out the win, but linebacker L.J. Fort had an interception slip through his fingers in the end zone and, on the next play, Vick hit Harbor for the game-winning catch.

“It didn’t matter what we did for three quarters,” Jackson in published reports. “We had to stop them to win the game. We were on the field to win it and we lost.”

The Browns also continue to have trouble against the run. The Eagles ran for 150 yards and a 5.0 yard per carry average, led by LeSean McCoy’s 110 yards on 20 carries. The number may have been higher if Eagles coach Andy Reid didn’t inexplicably call for 56 passes from Vick.

The Browns opened the scoring on a Phil Dawson 43-yard field goal (you thought it would be anything else?) with 9:12 left in the first quarter. The Eagles tied the game on an Alex Henery field goal at the start of the second quarter and, after that, the Browns continually held tough until Vick hit a wide-open Jeremy Maclin with an 18-yard touchdown pass just 17 seconds before the half – a tough end to an otherwise good first half from the defense.

Dawson added two more field goals in the second half to cut the lead to 10-9 as the Browns continued to squander scoring opportunities. The first field goal came after a Fort interception gave the Browns the ball at the Philadelphia 43-yard-line; the second after Joe Haden returned an interception to the Eagles’ 22-yard-line.

You just had a feeling that those missed opportunities were going to come back and bite the Browns and, sure enough, they did.

The Charlie Browniest play of the day came on the Eagles’ game-winning drive when Vick scrambled for nine yards and fumbled on a third down play. Vick recovered the ball, but Shurmur challenged the play.

The thing was, the fumble was not a challengeable call (and Vick clearly recovered it anyway), but the refs talked it over before letting the Browns know they could not challenge the call.

“I know it was a fumble,” Shurmur said after the game. “I saw us with the ball. So that’s why I challenged it.”

Yeah, it was that kind of day.

There will also most likely be plenty of talk this week about Shurmur’s decision to kick the extra point, rather than go for two following Jackson’s touchdown return. That score put the Browns up by five, 15-10, and going for two would have put the Browns up by seven (if they had succeeded).

But with 14 minutes still left to play, the call wasn’t automatic. If the Browns had failed and only led by five, and the Eagles kicked two field goals to win 16-15, Shurmur never would have heard the end of it from fans, so it was a 50/50 call either way.

“We talked about going for two but there was a full quarter (to play) and we wanted to get the points,” Shurmur said. “Those decisions (to go for two) are made when there are only one or two possessions left to play.”

The Browns now have a game under their belts and the rookies have all seen game action at real speed. They have a week now to work on what went wrong against the Eagles before heading to Cincinnati to take on the Bengals.

We’ll see then if they are fast learners or not.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)