Do You Trust Anyone In Berea?

The NFL Draft is about a month away and as usual Browns’ fans are both excited and showing their undying loyalty. It’s the tanking crowd, and one radio talk show host even recently said it is becoming irresponsible for the Browns not to trade Myles Garrett because he’s making the Browns too good to get one of the top three picks in the draft.

First of all, if you trade Garrett for say four first round picks, the odds of one of those players being even close to Garrett as a player is slim. The two-time defensive player of the year is headed to Canton when his playing days are over. And since 1999, the Browns have drafted two such players.

The Browns believe and have sold their fan base on the idea that there is one way to build a winning football team. Be bad enough to get a very high draft pick, let’s say top five, and draft a franchise quarterback. It seems like that is their only plan. They are always talking about “kicking the can down the road” until the following year to see if that can happen.

Apparently, that’s how other NFL teams have done it.

Oh, no they don’t.

The current NFL champion Seattle Seahawks worst season since 2010 has been a 7-10 record in 2021. The previous champ, the Eagles, have had two four win seasons in that same time span, but after their most recent poor season, they drafted a wide receiver in the first round.

Kansas City, who has won three Super Bowls since 2019, had one terrible season since 2010, a 2-14 record in ’12, following which they drafted Eric Fisher, an offensive tackle with their first selection in the next draft.

To be fair, the Rams won in ’21 and kind of did get their QB that way. Following a 4-12 season in 2016, the drafted Jared Goff with the first overall pick, and traded him for Matthew Stafford, a former first overall pick, who led them to their Super Bowl triumph.

So surely, getting a quarterback with a top three pick guarantees success. Three of the four QBs taken first overall did make the playoffs last season (Caleb Williams, Bryce Young, and Trevor Lawrence).

On the other hand, here are quarterbacks taken in the top three from 2020 to 2024: Joe Burrow, Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Young, C.J. Stroud, Williams, Jaden Daniels, and Drake Maye.

Of those nine passers, four of them are hits, two would be considered huge mistakes, and the others it is too soon to tell. But the way the Browns’ front office talks, it would be a 100% thing and it simply is not.

Add in the Browns’ factor.

They did tank 10 years ago and did get the first overall pick in Baker Mayfield, who at the very least can be considered a serviceable NFL passer. And then they screwed it up.

They either didn’t put a good support system around him which didn’t force him to mature, or they allowed him to play hurt and/or the coaching staff or front office soured on him, and they were distracted by the shiny keys that is Deshaun Watson.

Either way, they mortgaged the future to make the ill-fated Watson deal.

We guess this is just our way of saying we don’t trust anything that comes out of 76 Lou Groza Boulevard and neither should the fans or media.

The reality is that group doesn’t know how to build a winning football team. They are just throwing crap at a wall and seeing if it will stick. Unfortunately, that’s what Cleveland football fans have gotten. Crap.

No Excuses, No Moral Victory, But A Lot of Encouraging

The Cleveland Browns stood toe to toe with the two time AFC defending champion Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. In fact, they led most of the game.

However, when you are playing championship teams, you cannot make mistakes and the Browns made three critical ones in the second half and dropped a 33-29 decision at Arrowhead Stadium.

We have seen many site looking for a scapegoat to hang this loss on, but sometimes you can’t blame everything on one person or play.

Is anyone going to put the blame on Nick Chubb, who hadn’t fumbled in a game since the opening game of last year? That doesn’t seem fair. Nor is it to put an onus on Baker Mayfield, who clearly was trying to make the right play and throw the ball out of bounds in the fourth quarter, but was tripped up trying to do so, and threw an interception instead?

Now, Jamie Gillan’s error was inexcusable, and his faux pas gave the Chiefs the ball on the Cleveland 15, and the resulting touchdown finally put Kansas City in front.

Dropping the snap was bad enough, but trying to run with it compounded the error. Even if he shanks the kick, you gain yardage. If you want to place blame somewhere, that play would be the one to pin it on.

We suppose it depends on your viewpoint going into the game. We said it would be a very difficult chore for the Browns to go into KC and win, especially with a rebuilt defensive unit. The fact they almost pulled it off, bodes well for the rest of the season, and quite frankly, makes us feel even more optimistic about Kevin Stefanski’s squad.

We wondered if the offense would be as good in action as it appeared on paper, and it was. If the Browns execute, we imagine the Cleveland offense will look like the team they played yesterday. Meaning, it will be scary for opponents.

Now, comes the tough part. Looking at the schedule, the Browns are going to be the better team at least the next two weeks and probably the next four to five weeks. They can’t have a hiccup, they have to learn to do what good teams do, win games you are supposed to win.

That said, we have every confidence that the team will be prepared to do just that. Stefanski doesn’t strike us as the type to let complacency slip in, and the team getting full of themselves. Especially, because he will remind the players every day this week that they are 0-1.

We also aren’t claiming any moral victories. The Browns are too talented for that. They should win football games, and even though we figured it would be a tough opening game, the players didn’t play that way. They went in knowing they could win.

Two surprises for us in week one. First, we didn’t think rookie Anthony Schwartz would make much of an impact during the first half of the season, but boy did he make one on Sunday. It will interesting to see how he figures in when Odell Beckham Jr. is ready.

The other was David Njoku, who has been criticized and maligned since his rookie season. He looked like a match up problem for defenses with his size and speed at tight end. It is hard to believe it is his fifth year with Cleveland, and he is still just 25 years old.

If he catches the ball like he did vs. KC, it’s just another weapon for Stefanski to exploit.

Remembering Marty

It was sad to hear of the death of former Browns’ coach Marty Schottenheimer. A man who won 200 regular season games in the NFL, but unfortunately never got to the Super Bowl despite all that success.

Schottenheimer’s first two attempts to get to the title game ended in heartbreaking fashion, the first known as “The Drive”, the second known as “The Fumble”.

We wanted to share our impressions of him from a fan’s point of view, our point of view. We didn’t know the man, although we met him once, sitting next to him at a Cavs’ game in the late 80’s. He had his son with him, and we remember Marty reminding a young Brian Schottenheimer that he lived in Cleveland and should root for the Cavaliers.

Our thought was wow, he really is as intense as he was portrayed.

Schottenheimer ranks fourth in Browns’ history in wins as head coach, behind Paul Brown, Blanton Collier, and the man he replaced in Sam Rutigliano, but overall, you would have to rank him as the third best coach in Cleveland history, behind Brown and Collier, both of whom won NFL titles.

By the way, Kevin Stefanski is tied for 10th in wins after one season at the helm.

Schottenheimer took over a 1-7 team in 1984 and guided them to a 4-4 record, one of the losses was in overtime, the rest of the season.

The next season was the beginning of the last halcyon period in the history of the franchise.

Paul McDonald was replaced at QB with veteran Gary Danielson, and they drafted Bernie Kosar in the supplemental draft in the first round. GM Ernie Accorsi took advantage of the USFL folding to bring in RB Kevin Mack, and CB Frank Minnifield and the Browns improved to 8-8 and won the AFC Central Division.

After building a 21-3 lead over Miami in the first half of the playoff game, the Browns played very conservatively behind the rookie, Kosar, in the second half, and Dan Marino led the Dolphins to a comeback 24-21 victory.

That was kind of the beginning of what came to be called “Martyball”.

What followed was three more playoff appearances in a row, two of them coming as a result of AFC Central Division titles.

In 1986, as the story goes, Kosar pleaded with the coach to be aggressive in a divisional showdown vs. Cincinnati in the second last game of the year. Kosar won the argument, hitting Reggie Langhorne with a long pass on the game’s first play, and the Browns wound up winning 34-3 to take the division title.

We won’t forget our feeling in the AFC Championship Game at old Municipal Stadium when Kosar connected with Brian Brennan for a 48 yard TD pass to give the Browns a 20-13 lead with just over two minutes to go. Surely, Cleveland was going to make their first Super Bowl appearance.

John Elway and the Broncos felt differently.

At the time, many fans and media wondered about switching to a prevent defense after bottling up Elway for 58 minutes. But Schottenheimer’s background was on defense. He played linebacker in the old AFL and was a defensive coach and then coordinator. He wanted to put the game in the hands of the unit he felt most comfortable with.

The following year had the Browns with a 10-5 record, and they once again advanced to the AFC title game, this time in Denver. The Broncos got off to a 21-3 halftime lead, and after the Browns scored first in the second half, the defense allowed an 80 touchdown pass to make it 28-10 Denver.

Kosar rallied the Browns back and had them on the doorstep of tying the game when Earnest Byner fumbled, another crushing defeat.

It was the last time the Browns were that close to playing in a Super Bowl.

Schottenheimer and Art Modell had some disagreements about the makeup of the coaching staff after the ’88 season (10-6 and a wild card berth despite injuries to Kosar and his backup, Mike Pagel) and resigned.

He went on to the Chiefs for 10 seasons, winning 101 games, before coaching Washington for one year, and the Chargers for five seasons, has last year there producing a 14-2 record.

Although the Browns got to the conference title game in 1990, Marty got there once more as well, with the Chiefs in 1993, losing to Buffalo, 30-13.

However, 200 NFL wins is an incredible career. It places him 8th all time, 6th among men who coached after the merger. The names ahead of him read like a who’s who of NFL history: Don Shula, George Halas, Bill Belichick, Tom Landry, Curly Lambeau, Andy Reid, Paul Brown.

RIP Marty. And thank you for leading the Browns the last time they were a yearly power in the NFL.

Why Is Daddy Still Sad, Even Though The Browns Won?

Several years ago, there was a coloring book made up to be funny (we think) called Why Is Daddy Sad On Sundays? It was meant to make light of the lack of success the Cleveland Browns have had since returning to the NFL in 1999.

For the first time since they came back, the Browns are sitting at 8-3 on the season and right now have the top wild card spot in the AFC. The eight victories clinch the first non-losing season since 2007, when Romeo Crennel’s squad went 10-6 and just missed a playoff spot.

However, despite this record, which was preceded by several years of not mediocre football, it was downright putrid. Since ’99, Cleveland has had 16 seasons of 10 losses or more.

Even worse, 10 of those years have resulted in 12 or more losses, including a three year span (2015-17) in which the Browns went 4-44. You would think everyone would be celebrating the success this team has had.

You’d be wrong. Most of the criticism each week is pointed at quarterback Baker Mayfield, who with Sunday’s win raised his record as a starter to 20-20. He’s at .500, and we just showed you how dismal the recent history of the franchise has been.

If the Browns were coming off a Super Bowl season or several consecutive playoff appearances then we could understand a concern about “style points”, which the team didn’t achieve against the 1-10 Jaguars, winning by just 27-25.

We subscribe to the Bill Parcells’ theory of “you are what your record says you are”. We understand that two of the Cleveland losses were blowouts against division rivals, and that apparently stirs up some dissatisfaction among some people, but both losses were on the road, and Kevin Stefanski’s group gets another shot against each at First Energy Stadium.

It is very rare that any good professional football team goes through a season without a close call. And despite the final margin against Jacksonville, didn’t it feel like the Browns were in control of the game all day?

The Steelers are currently sitting at 10-0, but defeated the Giants on opening day by just a 26-16 score and just recently beat Dallas on the road with former Brown Garrett Gilbert at QB, 24-19. Not exactly impressive wins, but the Pittsburgh players and coaches don’t care. It’s a win.

The defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs won a week two match up against the Chargers in overtime, and just a few weeks ago beat another non-playoff team in Carolina by just two points, the same margin as the Browns win on Sunday.

We checked in on the 2007 New England Patriots, who finished 16-0 in the regular season and found a three point win over an 8-8 Eagles squad, and another three point win over the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens finished 5-11 that season.

The 1972 Dolphins, which finished without a loss and won the Super Bowl, had a two point win over a 7-7 Minnesota Vikings squad and a one point victory over a 4-9-1 Buffalo team.

We certainly aren’t comparing the Browns to any of those teams, Stefanski’s crew certainly has room to improve and hasn’t proven themselves yet in either the playoffs or a game against one of the league’s elite teams.

However, we are saying there are a lot of close games every year that don’t make sense considering the records of the teams in question. The NFL has used the “Any Given Sunday” slogan for years, signifying that any team in the league can beat anyone else.

In the meantime, be happy the Browns are 8-3. They have a chance to show they are good against the Tennessee Titans, who went to the AFC title game a year ago. And even if they lose, it’s not the end of the world.

This is a team that will likely be playing in January. It’s been a long time since a Browns fan could celebrate that.