There was only one. It was a stinker of the highest order, a second straight no-show from a Browns team with the league’s highest payroll, but there was only one. It was one-way traffic Sunday as the Dallas Cowboys demolished the Browns 33-17 in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as a quick glance at the score might suggest.

Just one. That’s also how many first downs the Browns had in the first half. Just one.

There have actually been worse season openers in this stadium, as loyal Cleveland Browns fans will likely remember, but most of those were intended as season openers with much lower expectations for the home team.

The calendar says it’s still early September, there are 16 games left on the schedule, and the Browns won’t play a single divisional game until late October. But whether you view the opener as a reality check, a piercing alarm, or just a quickly forgotten step in a long race, you have to be alarmed that the Browns’ offense came out and dink, dunk, clunk. Then it repeated itself, either with penalties or disappointing sequences where quarterback Deshaun Watson was pressured and generally missed his targets.

Let’s talk about the calendar. What the Browns did during training camp and the preseason in August did nothing to prepare them for a big-stage game against a quality opponent on Sunday. So there was only one, and there’s really no way to go but up, and of course, good teams in the past have started out as sloppy, flawed teams that eventually got better. But the Browns needed nearly two and a half quarters to mount a drive on Sunday and then sputtered again, a sign that they’re not exactly ready for a marathon or a sprint.

After the biggest pass play of the day, a 29-yarder over the middle to Pro Bowl tight end David Njoku, Njoku limped out. He did not return because of an ankle injury that will require further imaging on Monday. The Browns scored on the drive to cut their deficit to 27-10, and they scored again late in the game, but even when Watson threw one on the money near the goal line in the fourth quarter, Amari Cooper dropped it.

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Watson spent most of the day taking hits, trying to avoid hits, and throwing short passes or wildly inaccurate passes. Watson was 24 of 45 passing for 169 yards with a touchdown to cap the aforementioned third-quarter drive and two interceptions. Once the Cowboys settled in — and that took just 10 plays, not two quarters — they seemed to feast on a Browns offense that was sloppy in its operations and struggled to execute on many downs, not just money downs.

The official tally showed the Cowboys sacked Watson six times, along with 17 quarterback hits and eight pass breakups. The Browns were just 2 of 15 in converting third downs and gave up a 60-yard punt return touchdown to KaVontae Turpin early in the third quarter to make it 27-3.

Deshaun Watson was sacked six times in his opening game loss to the Cowboys. (Ken Blaze/Imagn Images)

Watson saw his first live action in nearly 10 months after recovering from season-ending shoulder surgery last November. Due at least in part to the team’s shortage of offensive tackles, Stefanski called an audible in late August and sat Watson out of the preseason altogether. The Browns’ offense was nearly complete during two days of competitive joint practices with the Vikings in mid-August.

“I’m not going to use that as an excuse,” Stefanski said after the game. “I’m not. There’s no excuse for getting hurt in those games. Where does the blame go? Me — coaches, players, all of us. That’s just the way it is.

“Dallas, they’re a good football team. We didn’t play well enough to win. You can’t do all the things we did and expect to win. We’ll learn from it and we’ll be ready to go next week.”

Stefanski and Watson both reiterated that they would not use the lack of preseason action as an excuse. But the Browns made no excuses or many plays, and it was clear early on that the Cowboys defense had confidence in their ability to dictate the game.

While there were only three practices from the start of training camp on July 25 through the end of preseason that Watson and his full staff of pass catchers fully participated in, what you saw in the season opener looked almost exactly like what happened during training camp — including the dropped passes and the penalties during joint practices that helped keep the offense from really moving.

Watson was under 50 percent (14 of 29) in completion percentage and the offense was averaging just 2.7 yards per play as the Cowboys extended their lead to 30-10 with 1:27 left in the third quarter. At the time, the Browns were 2 of 11 on third down. An early Stefanski call to try to convert a fourth down was overturned by a false start call on right tackle Dawand Jones, the first of Jones’ three first-half flags.

The Browns revamped their offense this offseason with a trade for wide receiver Jerry Jeudy and major staff changes, including the additions of Ken Dorsey as offensive coordinator, Andy Dickerson as offensive line coach and Tommy Rees as tight ends coach and passing game coordinator. Stefanski had repeatedly said Watson was healthy and ready to go in his third season since the Browns’ mega-trade in March 2022 to acquire him, but the results didn’t bear it out.

.@JerryJeudy with his first TD in a Browns uniform!!

📺: #DALvsCLE on @NFLonFOX and NFL+ photo.twitter.com/OYY5DZWWfs

— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) September 8, 2024

Stefanski said that with the game decided well into the fourth quarter, he wanted to pull Watson to keep Watson out of harm’s way. Watson refused, insisting on finishing the game. The fourth quarter of a blowout is usually a bad time, and this was it. But it’s clear that the Browns offense needed the reps, so maybe something good will come of the final 17 minutes or so.

That’s the state of affairs for this offense. Anything that looks like a job well done counts as a job well done. There’s clearly a lot of work to be done, and it’s fair to wonder now whether the Browns shouldn’t have done a little more in the six weeks leading up to Sunday.

“We’re not the type of people to make excuses,” Watson said. “Some people can say (the lack of real summer replays) can contribute a lot — you know, my injury, guys missing time — but at the end of the day, once you get on the field, you’ve just got to perform. You’ve got to execute. And you know, overall we didn’t do that. And yeah, it showed.”

Midway through the second quarter, the home fans were booing Watson and the offense. That continued through much of the third quarter, and many of the seats were empty by the fourth. That Michael Buffer, who was on the court and had to stop his signature call-out just before the punch line because Buffer forgot the new name of the Browns’ stadium, wasn’t just awkward. It proved to be a harbinger.

The Browns weren’t ready for battle. They were down three scores before they even seemed ready to battle, and now they’re clearly being forced to make up for lost time.

(Top photo of Deshaun Watson: Nick Cammett/Getty Images)