Bengals RB Jeremy Hill stands behind comments but clarifies

You have to give Jeremy Hill credit for his honesty. After suffering a devastating 24-3 loss to the Cleveland Browns, the rookie running back was asked if he believed that Cleveland was better than he thought.

"Oh no, not at all. They're probably worse than I thought, to be honest with you," Hill said after the game. "They didn't do anything special to me. I mean, respect to them, they won the game. But that's all I'll give them."

Browns safety Donte Whitner reacted:

"You know, that's a rookie, so you can't really take his words as anything other than pure ignorance and being a sore loser,'' said Whitner via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Other than that, anytime you lose a football game, the first thing that the coaching staff tells you, even if you don't feel that way is to give the other team credit and not say the ignorant comment that he made."

Hill really wasn't meaning any disrespect towards the Browns -- it was his way of reflecting on how poorly the Bengals played during their 24-3 loss on Thursday. In other words, in his mind, it was a matter of the Bengals playing horribly compared to the Browns singlehandedly wiping them off the floor with a mop.

"Everything I said I meant," Hill said via Bengals.com. "It was really meant as no disrespect to them. Just how we played really affected the game. They just did a lot of dropping back with eight (defenders). Simple looks. We just missed a lot of little things. It was on us."

"Just watching the film, it was one guy messing up. Get 13 yards and fumble. Stuff like that," Hill said. "Nothing they did was miraculous. It was just us making simple mistakes. We'll see them again."

Or maybe Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis is being too preachy after benching Hill for a period of time after his fumble.

Let's not ask him about it though.