It was a rough Sunday for Browns captain Scott Fujita, who was hopelessly out of his element.

Fujita knows his way through a game as well as any Cleveland Brown, but he was no match for a double team of his daughter Isabell in one ear and his other daughter, Delilah, in the other.

Fujita was home and powerless to stop the 75-yard Maurice Jones-Drew breakaway that wrecked his team in a 24-20 loss at Jacksonville. He suffered a sprained knee a week earlier, probably a big reason the defense didn’t hold a lead against the Jets.

“I’ve been in that situation before,” said Fujita, a ninth-year pro. “It drives you absolutely crazy .... crazy ... especially when you have two kids sitting there beside you and they want to talk the whole game.”

It can be viewed as a shame that Fujita wasn’t around to help the Browns turn losses into wins that would have left them at 5-5 instead of 3-7. But that’s life when a player gets older, which is an issue with the Browns, who have more 30-something players than most.

Fujita, 31, never missed a game in his first five pro seasons, but this is the fourth straight year in which he lost time to an injury.

“I always felt I was a fast healer,” he said, smiling and bravely saying he’d like to play Sunday against Carolina.

Turning serious, he said, “I’ve still got a knee brace on, and I’m hobbling.”

Fujita may be lost until the final two games, against Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but General Manager Tom Heckert opted not to put him on injured reserve.

Last weekend, Defensive Coordinator Rob Ryan said the reason “may have been” that the brass hoped the Browns would beat Jacksonville and several other teams, so that the final games might be relevant when Fujita returns.

At 3-7, the brass may not say so, but President Mike Holmgren most likely has one eye squarely on solidifying a nucleus for 2011. Fujita surely is part of that, one reason his return for two or three games would be relevant.

“This team has showed a lot of progress,” Fujita said. “There’s a lot of things to be proud of. But the margin of error in this league is so small ...

“Trust me. I’ve played a lot of years in this league. When you start to learn how to do it the right way, then you just naturally do it. Then those close games, at the end, you thrive on it, and it’s not even an issue.”