Thursday, November 22, 2001
Browns seek answer to stopping Dillon
By JOE KAY
AP Sports Writer
Cornerback Corey Fuller has bounced off Corey Dillon enough times to know what's ahead if the Cleveland Browns don't shape up this weekend.
There will be enough bruises and bedlam to go around.
The Bengals running back remains their biggest tormentor. The Browns' defense is vastly improved this season, just like their record, but it still hasn't figured out how to stop Dillon.
They get another chance Sunday in Cleveland.
“We'd better play good defense on him or he's going to end up with 200 yards or 180 or whatever he usually gets,” Fuller said.
Try 144 — his average in five games against the Browns.
Or 5.9 — the average number of yards he gets every time he tucks the ball in his left arm and heads upfield against Cleveland.
His secret?
“I don't know,” Fuller said. “I wish he would tell us.”
Dillon's not telling anybody his secrets. He's not talking to the media heading into the season's second matchup of the Browns (5-4) and the Bengals (4-5).
Some opponents seem to have figured it out a little bit. Dillon has topped 100 yards only three times this season, turning into an all-or-nothing running back.
In the other six games, Dillon has been held to 64 or fewer yards. San Diego kept him at 46, Chicago stopped him at 30, and Tennessee held him to 38 last Sunday in the Titans' 20-7 win.
“In the games where his yardage is maybe not what he'd like for it to be, it's because the other team has been able to manage the big runs,” Browns coach Butch Davis said Wednesday. “The ones that kill you are the times that he goes 96 or he goes 50 or 40 or 60, and God forbid if he does it more than once in a ballgame.”
In the Bengals' 24-14 victory over the Browns on Oct. 14, Dillon didn't have a run longer than 25 yards. He had a lot of runs, though — a season-high 31 carries for 140 yards overall.
It stands as the second-best total by a running back against the Browns this season, trailing Jerome Bettis' 163-yard game. Dillon's only bigger game was 184 yards against Detroit, where he went 96 yards on the first play and got 88 yards on 26 carries the rest of the way.
Dillon's role has been limited in the last two games because the Bengals fell behind and chose to throw. He ran 17 times in each of the losses.
“We haven't run the ball well in the last couple of weeks,” quarterback Jon Kitna said. “That's something that we're working on, and I think we'll correct that this week. I think we have some good things in our game plan to address that problem.”
Part of the problem is that teams have done a much better job taking away Dillon's cutback lanes. He repeatedly started toward the sideline, cut back and broke a long run during his 278-yard game against Denver last year, an NFL record.
Dillon followed that game with 137 yards against Cleveland. In the 17 games since then, Dillon has reached 100 yards five times. In five of those games, he failed to reach 50 yards.
The Bengals think there's an easy fix.
“The longer we stay in games — we're not down by two scores in the fourth quarter — the more opportunities we get to run the ball in the fourth quarter,” Kitna said. “Get Corey up around 22 or 25 carries, that's when the big chunks are going to come, after he gets a chance to wear defenses down.”
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Browns seek answer to stopping Dillon