Mangini goes for win

Was he clouded by the opponent or did he simply believe he could win?

The sequence started with an INT by rookie CB Joe Haden deep in Browns territory.

1:35 remaining in Overtime. Cleveland Browns with the ball at their 3.  New York Jets with one timeout left.  If Browns coach Eric Mangini really wanted to stick it to his former team, he would have run out of the clock and let the Jets sit with a 6-2-1 record and fighting for a wild card spot.

Instead, Mangini called a passing play on first down which went incomplete; a running play on second down, followed by a Colt McCoy sack on third-and-8, forcing Cleveland’s Reggie Holmes to punt from his end zone.

Hodges got off a 53-yard kick that New York’s Jim Leonhard returned 18 yards to Cleveland’s 37.

On first down, Sanchez whipped a quick pass to Holmes, who broke free from cornerback Eric Wright, stepped inside of rookie safety T.J. Ward and sprinted into the end zone.

“Maybe I should have played for the tie,” Mangini would later say.

“We could have run it three times and run the clock out at that point, but I thought we had a chance,” Mangini said.

Mangini said he would have liked Haden to bat the ball down, but he didn’t blame him, saying, “The heat of the moment” made it difficult for him to think that.

“Obviously, we wish it was a different result, but we fight and deal with adversity well,” Mangini said. “There’s no sense of woe-is-me or any of that stuff. I feel pretty strongly about this group. We’re going to keep getting better, and the results will get better.”