PRO FOOTBALL : Cardinals Turn ‘Lost Game’ Into 27-24 OT Win

Neil Lomax was absolutely certain the game was lost.

“There was no question in my mind when they scored that last touchdown, I thought we had lost the football game,” Lomax said Sunday after he rallied the St. Louis Cardinals to a 27-24 overtime victory over the Cleveland Browns.

Neil O’Donoghue won the game with a 35-yard field goal on the first possession in overtime in front of a rain-soaked crowd of 62,107 at Cleveland Stadium.

The Browns trailed, 17-3, early in the fourth quarter but then scored three touchdowns, the last one by Ozzie Newsome with 38 seconds left in regulation, to take a 24-17 lead.

Lomax, however, wouldn’t quit.

“We had one more chance on it,” he said. “In the huddle, I told these guys, ‘This is it. This is four weeks of training camp, all this time with preseason games, and we come here to lose?’ They all said, ‘No, no, we’re not going to lose.’ ”

Lomax drove the Cardinals 63 yards in four plays, consuming just 34 seconds before firing the game-tying five-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Pat Tilley in the right flat.

“It was a perfect play at that time,” Cleveland cornerback Frank Minnifield said. “Anybody who knows anything about football knows that every defense has a weak spot. That was it on that play.”

Added Lomax: “That set the tempo for overtime. I knew, and the rest of the team knew, that we were going to win.”

The victory was only the second in the last nine NFL openers for St. Louis.

O’Donoghue’s winning field goal came with 9:33 remaining in overtime.

“I just told the team this, and I want to make it clear that this isn’t 1984 revisited,” Cleveland Coach Marty Schottenheimer said. “We made a lot of mistakes that hurt us today, but we were down, 17-3, in the fourth quarter and we played our butts off.

“St. Louis has a lot of firepower, and they proved it. We had 357 yards and held them to 286 and did everything but win the game.”

Cornerback Lionel Washington gave the Cardinals a 17-3 lead with a 48-yard interception return four minutes into the fourth quarter.

The Browns, however, made it 17-10 when Kevin Mack swept 13 yards for a touchdown with 7:55 to play, and tied it, 17-17, on a 17-yard pass from Gary Danielson to Harry Holt four minutes later.

Danielson then hit Newsome with a screen pass that Newsome carried 25 yards for a 24-17 lead.

Cleveland earlier lost two fumbles and the interception, with the three errors leading to St. Louis’ first three scores.

Ottis Anderson, who later caught a 43-yard pass to spark the Cardinals’ game-tying drive, scored on a four-yard run to give the Cardinals a 7-0 lead in the first quarter. Cleveland made it 7-3 at the half when Matt Bahr hit a 33-yard field goal, his 13th straight successful attempt over two seasons.

O’Donoghue kicked a 37-yard field goal to give St. Louis a 10-3 lead after three quarters.