The Green Bay Packers managed a baffling defeat in Cleveland on Sept. 21, falling by a 13-10 score to a winless Browns team on a last-second field goal. Considering Cleveland scored three times in the final 3 minutes, 45 seconds to register victory, it felt particularly stunning.
Of course, it wasn’t just a loss in the final 3:45, a stretch of doom that began when Andre Szmyt kicked a 35-yard field goal to get Cleveland on the board and pull the Browns to within 10-3. It required a lackluster offensive performance throughout the game, including injuries on the offensive line that played into the team’s difficulty slowing the Browns’ pass rush.
But it sure felt like a scenario in which everything that could go wrong went wrong, reminiscent of all-time Packers collapses like the 2014 NFC championship game. Here’s where it went sideways.
3:45: The Browns get on the board
It began with a chip-shot field goal from Andre Szmyt, and it wouldn’t be the last we heard from him. The Packers defense had been pitching a shutout into the fourth quarter, and though this pulled Cleveland to within one score, a 15-play drive that milked nearly 6 minutes off the clock and ended in only 3 points could arguably be termed a success.
3:33: A special teams penalty, yet again
The Packers committed a staggering 14 penalties for 75 yards, the highest volume of flags since the Super Bowl season in 2010, when they were docked for 18 penalties against the Chicago Bears in Week 3. The Packers are one of the five most-penalized teams in the NFL through three weeks.
This particular flag — holding on Lukas Van Ness — married two of Green Bay’s biggest problems this year: The flags and the special-teams play. It forced the Packers to start their drive on their own 18.
3:18: The inexplicable Jordan Love throw
One of quarterback Jordan Love’s greatest traits is his ability to take care of the football even while pursuing throws down the field. Love led the league, by far, in average depth of target (ADOT) through two weeks, meaning he racked up the most average “air yards” on his pass attempts of anyone in the league. Love was fifth in the league in that department last year, and yet he had gone nine consecutive games without an interception, and most of a 10th.
OUR BALL!!#GBvsCLE on FOX & NFL+ pic.twitter.com/ccZiFi0sXc
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) September 21, 2025
Then came the throw from his own 25 on third-and-3, when he threw the ball right into the arms of Cleveland’s Grant Delpit, who got up and returned the ball to the 4-yard line.
At this point, the Browns had only one timeout remaining. Cleveland still would have had time to mount a game-tying scoring drive, but resources were getting diminished.
3:01: Touchdown, Browns
Given a short field, the Browns scored their only touchdown of the day on a 1-yard run by Quinshon Judkins, his first career touchdown. One play earlier, an incomplete pass in the end zone drew a flag on Evan Williams, but the Browns would have been facing second-and-goal on the 4 anyway without it, and a touchdown felt just about inevitable regardless of the penalty.
First NFL touchdown for Q!#GBvsCLE on FOX & NFL+ pic.twitter.com/imtHezgzek
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) September 21, 2025
That tied the game at 10-10.
2:00: Josh Jacobs nearly fumbles … and maybe it would have been better if he had
Green Bay picked up chunks of yardage on the first two plays (pass interference for 20 yards and Tucker Kraft 18-yard pickup) of the next series to get all the way to the Cleveland 22-yard line. Surely, Green Bay could now collect the necessary points to win the game, right after the 2-minute warning.
But on first-and-10, Cleveland’s Devin Bush punched the ball out of the hands of running back Josh Jacobs. A long replay tried to determine if Jacobs or Denzel Ward had possession of the ball, with the ruling that the play would stand as called. Cleveland elected to use its final timeout to stop the clock at 1:56.
Had the Browns been awarded possession, they would have had the ball at their own 21-yard line with 1:56 to go. Instead, they eventually wound up with it on their own 47 with 21 seconds left.
1:12: Yet another penalty and a conservative call
Rasheed Walker’s false start pushed the Packers back to third-and-15 from the 27-yard line, and then Jacobs was given the handoff for a 2-yard gain. The Packers let the clock leak down to 27 seconds and called timeout, setting up a 43-yard field goal for Brandon McManus.
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) September 21, 2025
0:27: A Milwaukee-area native with the play of the game
Shelby Harris, an NFL veteran who played football at Homestead High School, leapt into the air to block the McManus attempt from 43 yards, a relative chip shot by NFL standards. The batted ball bounded out to the Cleveland 47-yard line, where the Browns took over.
definition of clutch!!#GBvsCLE on FOX & NFL+ pic.twitter.com/wrzKLJRijq
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) September 21, 2025
0:21: A penalty on Micah Parsons
One more flag for the road. Micah Parsons, who didn’t have quite the same impact in Game 3 as he did the first two weeks with his new team, tried to time the snap and hopped into the backfield early. That set the Browns up in Packers territory at the 48-yard line.
0:12: The completion to David Njoku
An 8-yard completion isn’t normally a back-breaker, but on third-and-2, Joe Flacco’s pass over the middle to tight end David Njoku gave the Browns the ball at the 37-yard line, turning a 63-yard kick into a more manageable 55-yarder. Evan Williams was the man matched up on Njoku.
As an added nugget of bad vibes, Njoku was the player the Browns drafted with the 29th pick of the 2017 draft, a pick that had belonged to the Packers. The Packers infamously traded out of the first round that year, missing a chance to take future Hall of Famer and Wisconsin native T.J. Watt, who went one pick later to the Steelers at No. 30.
0:00: A rookie hero does the job for the Browns
Szmyt missed a 36-yard field goal and extra point in Week 1 against Cincinnati, a heartbreaking 17-16 loss for the Browns. The Illinois native who attended Syracuse and initially signed with his homestate Bears in 2023 as an undrafted free agent spent some time in the UFL before signing with the Browns practice squad last winter. He beat out incumbent Dustin Hopkins for the kicking job out of camp, then came under fire for his bad opening-week performance.
It was his first attempt from 50-plus yards in his NFL career, and he buried it. He dedicated the moment to his mother, Lala, who died in July from a sudden aneurysm just before he reported to Browns camp.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ten plays that led to a Green Bay Packers meltdown vs Cleveland Browns
