CLEVELAND, Ohio — Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield knows it’s above his pay grade to comment on Freddie Kitchens’ job security, but he doesn’t believe Kitchens deserves all the blame for this losing season.

“That’s not my decision to make, so whatever happens, happens,’’ Mayfield said after Sunday’s 31-15 loss to the Ravens that dropped them to 6-9 and killed their playoff hopes. “Moving forward, I know how I’m going to handle it, getting whatever receiving corps and tight ends we have together in the offseason and making sure we’re on the same page so we hit the ground running in the spring – kind of like I hit on earlier in the week – to where there’s no room to be made up come training camp.

“It’s a process, but I’m looking forward to this group and seeing what we put together and how we work.”

The loss ensured that the Browns will have a 12th straight losing season, and 19th out of 21 since they returned in 1999. That wasn’t supposed to happen in this Season of Great Expectations, and the Browns will make a decision after next week’s game in Cincinnati on whether or not to fire Kitchens — if they haven’t already made up their minds.

“Anytime you have a head coach and you have a losing record, that’s the first person everyone points to, but it goes to many more things than just Freddie,’’ said Mayfield. “We can all be better in this process. I think that’s what it comes down to is there’s not one single thing to blame. Just overall, we all have to bring it more and more every day to meet the expectations we set for ourselves.”

Whether or not the Browns beat the Bengals in the season finale next week, they’ll end up with a worse record than their 7-8-1 mark last season — despite the fact they traded for Odell Beckham Jr., signed Kareem Hunt and added other talent such as Sheldon Richardson and Olivier Vernon.

“We set the bar high for ourselves,’’ said Mayfield, who’s now made it clear in two straight interviews that the Browns didn’t have their offensive act together enough for OTAs. “Our expectations were extremely high, and we didn’t meet that so that’s the most disappointing thing. In the bigger picture and mindset, it’s a process to turn around what this once was to where we want to go and where we should be at right now. It is a process and there is a lot of room for improvement and progress to be made.”

As for the step back from 2018, Mayfield said, “if we take care of business next week, we will end up with the same amount of wins. Looking back on it, it’s pretty much the same thing for us except with bigger expectations and we were not good enough.”

The fact the Browns looked undisciplined, unorganized and overmatched wasn’t lost on Ravens defensive end Jihad Ward.

“All I can say is they better get it together or people are going to start getting fired,’’ said Ward.

The game began amid a report by Jason LaCanfora of CBS Sports that the Browns could be interested in Urban Meyer if they fire Kitchens because of Meyer’s close relationship with Jimmy Haslam.

By halftime, fans booed the Browns off the field after a first-half playcalling meltdown that hurt Kitchens’ bid to keep his job.

“It was very disappointing,’’ said Kitchens. “The result was very disappointing. At the end of the day, we didn’t do enough to get off the field on third down and then making plays to stay on the field offensively on third down. I thought special teams, besides the missed extra point, played extremely hard and extremely well. I am proud of the way the guys kept fighting and kept battling to the very end so I am proud of them for that. I just wish we could have made a few more plays to get the job done and get the result that we wanted.”

Kitchens, who’s struggled to run an efficient and explosive offense all season, made some horrible decisions with just over two minutes left in the first half and the Browns clinging to a 6-0 lead that resulted in two TD passes from Lamar Jackson to tight end Mark Andrews in the final 1:18 of the half.

It started when Kitchens called for halfback option pass on third and 1 from the 28 with 2:09 remaining. The Ravens sniffed out the play and dropped Hunt for an 8-yard loss.

“Yeah, trying to take a shot and go for it on fourth down if we didn’t get it, but it didn’t happen,’’ said Kitchens. “Trick play… It was going to be a halfback pass and the corner came off the edge. If we would have gotten it off, we would have been all right.”

Was the intended receiver open?

“A couple of different things happened on that play that should not have happened, but I will just say it was an option pass and I should not have called it,’’ he said. “It’s one of those plays you try to call and you try to create some momentum. If it doesn’t happen, you come back and get it on fourth-and-1, and we just lost some yardage.”

But he would’ve gone for it on fourth and 1 — from his own 28?

“Definitely,’’ he said. “Fourth-and-1 – definitely.”

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson took over at his 37 with with 1:50 left in the half — and no timeouts — and promptly hit running back Mark Ingram with a 24-yard pass over the middle to the Browns’ 39. On the second play of the drive, Jackson found Andrews wide open in the end zone for a 39-yard TD pass that made it 7-6 with 1:18 left before the break.

Mayfield got the ball back at his 25, and instead of running the ball and taking the lead into halftime, Kitchens called three straight pass plays and all three failed. Mayfield took a deep shot to Damion Ratley on first down, and it was almost picked off by safety Chuck Clark. Clark didn’t get the pick, but he knocked away the next two passes, a short one to Jarvis Landry and then one at the line of scrimmage.

It gave the Ravens the ball back at their 25 with :55 seconds remaining — plenty of time for Jackson and their high-flying offense. Jackson marched them 75 yards in 7 plays, capped by a 14-yard pass to Andrews in the end zone with nine second left in the half, after Jackson stepped up out of trouble.

“They went Cover 0,’’ said Jackson. “I had to beat the safety off the edge. I wish I was able to hit Mark the first time because he was open already, but the guy grabbed me and I just had to stay up to make a throw. I didn’t know what happened with the catch. I just know when I looked up, we had six and the rest is history.”

Why didn’t Kitchens run the clock down there with some runs?

“We could have,’’ he said. “We were trying to get the clock started. A couple of short passes that got batted down. We could have ran it and could have done a lot of things but called a couple of 5-yard routes and the clock never got started so it is second guess once it happened.”

Did he at least consider running it on third down to knocked 40 seconds off the clock?

“Yeah, definitely,’’ he said. “I called one I thought that we could have potential to run after catch, and it got knocked down. If I had to do it over again, I would not do it, but I do not have it to do over again because of the result. You can’t always coach off results. I’m trying to move the ball.”

The two bang-bang touchdowns — the result of botched play calling as well as some poor execution — could be a big part of the decision-making process when the Browns sit down to determine Kitchens’ fate. He always speaks of the double-double -- scoring at the end of the first half and the start of the third quarter.

"[The Ravens] got it,'' said Randall.

Not only that, they turned it into a triple, with the two scores at the end of the half and the one at the start of the third.

"Yeah, 21 straight,'' said Randall. "When you let the offense get back in the rhythm that they want to be in, where they’re in control of the game, eating up the clock, getting first downs, they’re very, very tough to beat.''

The botched sequence stands in stark contrast scoring two in the final 1:18 with no timeouts remaining and then storming out of the locker room with a third straight TD drive. This time, Jackson largely used his legs to move downfield, rushing for 15, 18 and 8 and 8 yards before finding Mark Ingram wide open for a 12-yard TD catch.

That was all the Ravens needed for their 11th straight victory, but they tacked on 10 more points in the fourth quarter.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t get off the field on third down,’’ said Kitchens. “They were 7-11 on third down and were 3-12 so there is a big discrepancy there, and we had opportunities. We had opportunities to make some plays and we just did not do it.”

One thing working in the Browns’ favor is that Kitchens’ players fought until the end.

"No, we don’t have no quit up in our players here,'' Randall said. "We’ve got a bunch of news faces, a bunch of new guys trying to learn the scheme up on the go, so guys will not quit. That’s just not up in our DNA.

But at this point, the Browns will be hard-pressed to win in Cincinnati next week and finish 7-9. Either way, the Browns will take a long, hard look at Kitchens and decide if he’s one-and-done.

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