ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – The Browns regulars were forced to wear a tie Saturday night in their dress rehearsal for the regular season.

It was, instead, the reserves who were the ones dressed for success, providing the Browns with a 20-17 come-from-behind preseason win over the Buffalo Bills at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

The deciding points came when No. 2 place kicker Chris Chandler booted a 35-yard field goal as time expired to push the Browns to 2-1 with one game to play while dropping Buffalo to 0-3.

“We wanted to come up here and win a game on the road,” said Browns head coach Romeo Crennel, whose team was beaten 20-7 by Philadelphia in its only other road preseason contest. “It wasn’t pretty, but we were able to do it.”

The winning kick came as the result of an 11-play, 64-yard drive directed by No. 3 quarterback Derek Anderson, with a lot of help from rookie running.back Jerome Harrison. Anderson connected with wide receiver Kendrick Mosley for 21 yards and rookie wideout Travis Wilson for 11. Harrison ran three times for 38 yards. 

Anderson and the Browns probably thought they had won the game when the quarterback hit wide receiver Joshua Cribbs with a 28-yard touchdown pass with 4:12 left in the game, providing a 17-10 lead. Cribbs, who had just one reception as a rookie last season, caught the ball at the Buffalo 10 on a crossing route and then hurdled several defenders to get into the end zone and complete a six-play, 75-yard march..

But the Bills answered 2:06 later with a TD of their own to tie the game at 17-17 when running back Lionel Gates fell into the end zone – or one-hopped his way there, take your pick – from three yards out on a fourth-and-one play. It was set up by Craig Nall’s 56-yard pass to wide receiver George Wilson on the first play, taking the Ball to the Cleveland 23.

That necessitated Anderson and the Browns to go back out there and do it again, and they were up to the task. He finished 4-of-7 passing for 83 yards and a 138.7 quarterback rating.

“Sometimes in this game, you think you might have a little bit of an edge, but then that edge disappears and you find yourself in a dogfight,” Crennel said. “But we were able to pull it out, and that’s good.”

The Browns put on a clinic on the first possession of the game, using almost seven minutes to go 68 yards in 11 plays for a touchdown to make it 7-0. The 68 yards is exactly four times more than the Browns had in a 37-7 loss at Buffalo late in the 2004 regular season, when they had just 17 yards.

Quarterback Charlie Frye was 6-for-6 passing for 56 yards on the drive, hitting six different receivers. That includes tight end Steve Heiden, who was all alone in the back of the end zone when he caught a two-yarder for the score after Frye froze the Bills defense with an excellent play-fake into the line on a first-and-goal play.

Wide receiver Braylon Edwards helped set up the TD by making a nine-yard catch in heavy traffic on the preceding play – third and five from the 11. It was his first reception of the preseason and only his second play after missing the first two games while he continues to recover from major knee surgery. He had entered the contest moments before but was used as a decoy, running through the area to flush out the zone. That enabled Harrison to come underneath on an eight-yard catch-and-run on third-and-six from the Buffalo 24.

Another big play on the drive was Frye’s 22-yard rocket shot to wide receiver Dennis Northcutt. Also, wideout Joe Jurevicius grabbed a 12-yarder, using a stiff-arm to avoid a tackler for extra yardage after the catch.

“If you could draw up a first drive, you would make it look like that,” Frye said. “But you can’t relax after that.”

The Browns did, though. As Crennel pointed out, “We gave up some sacks that took us out of field-goal range, and we failed to get some sack that allowed them to keep drives going.”

The Bills tied it 7-7 with 10 seconds left in the first quarter when wide receiver Peerless Price ran past cornerback Ralph Brown to catch a 54-yard TD pass from J.P. Losman on a fly route down the left sideline. The Browns almost sacked Losman twice on the play, Matt Stewart sliding past him as the quarterback stepped up in the pocket and then Willie McGinest flying over top of him just after he threw.

It was plays such as that one that allowed Losman to go xx-xx passing on the night for xx yards to nail down the starting job from Craig Nall.

The Browns gained only 39 more net yards and had only one other decent drive in the half. On the strength of three Harrison runs totaling 19 yards, they moved 40 yards - to the Buffalo 39 - late in the second quarter. But after the drive stalled, Phil Dawson was wide right on a low, line-drive 56-yard field-goal attempt.

The Bills took over and got a field goal of their own – a 32-yarder by Rian Lindell on the final play of the first half – to go ahead 10-7. Penalties hurt the Bills on the drive – they were whistled twice, including one that nullified a seven-yard Losman scramble for a TD – and the Browns did a good job of cornering wide receiver Roscoe Parrish when it counted the most, holding him to just third yards after he caught a pass on third and goal from the 17 to force the field-goal try.

The Bills drove to the Cleveland 37 on their first possession of the second half, but Brown gained a measure of revenge for giving up the TD by stepping in front of wide receiver Lee Evans, a Bedford, Ohio native, for the interception at the xx.

Frye, who finished 12-of-16 passing for 76 yards and the TD for a 105.2 quarterback rating, was replaced by Ken Dorsey on the Browns’ second possession of the third quarter. Dorsey promptly hit unheralded – but impressive-looking – wide receiver Kendrick Mosley for 24 yards on the third play and eventually got the Browns to the Buffalo 34. Dawson tried another field goal – a 51-yarder – and missed to the left, but he got a reprieve when the Bills were penalized five yards for having 12 men on the field.

Dawson connected on his re-kick from 46 yards – but only barely, as the ball hit the left upright and caromed through to make it 10-10 with 2:16 left in the quarter.

The regulars for both sides departed at that point. The Browns No. 1 defense finished the night having excelled for a third straight time against the run, giving up just 37 yards in 14 carries (2.6 average).

Nall got the Bills to the Cleveland 7 midway through the fourth quarter but then had a pass intercepted by rookie safety Justin Hamilton. That set the stage for the Browns backups to put not one but two late drives together for the win.