Frustrations reach tipping point in Cleveland Browns’ loss to Baltimore Ravens

CLEVELAND — The frustrations of Browns players revealed themselves Sunday when two prominent members of the team dealt with incidents on the field during the team’s 31-15 loss to the Baltimore Ravens at FirstEnergy Stadium.

Browns coach Freddie Kitchens benched Sheldon Richardson with 3:45 left in the game after officials flagged the defensive tackle for unsportsmanlike conduct with the Browns trailing 24-15.

Richardson, 6-foot-3, 294 pounds, said he was just protecting Browns rookie safety Sheldrick Redwine.

″[Cornerback] Marcus Peters was standing over him. I thought he was like kneeing him in his head or whatever he was doing,” Richardson said. “He was just playing around, but he can do it with somebody else’s teammate, not mine. That’s pretty much it.

“I don’t know how two black guys can have a racial conversation against each other, but that’s what [the ref] told me or he told Freddie and then he told me just because he told me to move from the sideline three times. So I don’t know which one it was.”

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Richardson said he was unsure of what Peters was doing, but he was always taught to protect his teammates, so he said something to the Ravens cornerback.

“His foot was by his head. That’s all. I don’t know if he was like playing around or not. But he was saying something, and I was like, ‘We got it, fam.’ That’s all. He was talking stuff. So something got said back him.”

And Kitchens said he removed him from the game after the 15-yard penalty.

“When an official tells him to get back in the huddle, he needs to get back in the huddle,” Kitchens said. “It is just that simple. That is all I have, and they threw the flag on it, but he needs to do what the official asks him to do.”

Richardson demonstrated his displeasure after arriving on the sideline. When asked if Kitchens’ move frustrated him, his face expressed his irritation before delivering a terse “next question.”

Peters appeared to be a common factor in incidents with the Browns. Odell Beckham Jr. and Peters went at each other all afternoon.

After Beckham snagged a 3-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Baker Mayfield over Peters, television cameras picked up shots of a heated Beckham tossing his helmet into the bench and talking animatedly to Kitchens after the Browns failed on a 2-point conversion attempt. Beckham, who had already been penalized by officials for unsportsmanlike conduct, was venting.

“We were just talking,” Beckham said of the interaction “Football, the refs making calls. Basically they were warning me that one more personal foul — or whatever it is — and I’d be out the game.”

Kitchens downplayed the incident.

“I think it was something dealing with one of their guys,” he said. “It was not the call or anything like that. I do not think there is a big deal there. He is voicing frustration on how they are treating him.”

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Mayfield agreed.

“No [it’s] just friendly jawing back and forth between him and Peters,” he said. “I know they have a good relationship so I think it is just competition.”

That may have been the case, but Beckham did express his disdain for the earlier unsportsmanlike conduct penalty officials leveled, calling it stupid considering he’s performed the celebration all year.

“It’s not like there was a player in front of me, or anybody,” he said. “It was very unintentional. But it is what it is. The whole field is facing this way and I’m facing [the other] way,” Beckham said. “I’m not talking to nobody. Personally I thought it was stupid, but it is what it is.”

Follow the Akron Beacon Journal's George M. Thomas on Twitter @ByGeorgeThomas.

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