Despite a 24-3 shellacking at the hands of the Browns on Thursday night, Cincinnati Bengals rookie running back Jeremy Hill remained largely unimpressed with the product Cleveland put out on the field.
The Browns excited a lot of people with their trouncing of the Bengals, but after the game, Hill told reporters he actually thought they were worse than what he had seen on film heading into the matchup, according to Coley Harvey of ESPN.
"Oh no, not at all," Hill said when asked if the team was better than he expected. "They're probably worse than I thought, to be honest with you."
The Browns defense picked off Bengals starting quarterback Andy Dalton three times and held the Bengals to less than 200 yards of offense. Dalton finished with 10 completions on 33 attempts for 86 yards and a QB rating of 2.0 - far and away the worst performance of his career, according to Chris Burke of Sports Illustrated.
Hill, an electrifying rookie who rushed for 154 yards and two touchdowns in a win over the Jacksonville Jaguars only four days prior, managed just 55 yards on 12 carries against Cleveland.
But he would make no concessions afterward about the Browns' hand in his - and the team's - poor showing.
"They didn't do anything special to me," Hill continued. "I mean, respect to them, they won the game. But that's all I'll give them."
It's hard to tell what exactly Hill means by that. Cleveland won the game - the only stat that really matters at the end of the day. What else could he give them?
"Those guys, they're not that good," he said. "It was on us [Thursday]. We gave them the game, in my opinion. They didn't do anything special. We just gave them the game. They just sat back with coverage the whole day."
Maybe the strategy wasn't special, but it worked. Hopefully, for the Bengals, Hill will learn a valuable lesson both from the game and his poor choice in postgame comments.
