We’ve talked on brownsdailydose.com during both the Cavaliers’ championship run back in the spring and the Indians’ current title run, about how what’s happening with those teams can be applied to the Browns and their search to someday get to that level.
There will be another chance for that observation and study this weekend.
The first comes with the Indians’ World Series games 2, 3 and 4 in Chicago against the Cubs. Those all-important contests are on the minds of nearly everyone in Northeast Ohio and beyond. It is a constant, steady 24/7 buzz, reaching a deafening oar in the evenings when those games are played. Fans are wishing and hoping and praying – and dreaming.
The Browns can look at all that and see, just as they are able to look at what the Cavs did and see, how not just this town, but this entire region, reacts to a champion. It’s off the charts. You can’t describe it in words. It is more – much more — than that. And as such Imagining what that would be like for the Browns should fuel the fire of everybody at 76 Lou Groza Boulevard in Berea. It’s right there in front of their faces, and the Browns have been able to see it play out not once, but twice. If they don’t get it – understand it fully, up, down and sideways – then it’s own fault and they will pay for it down the road.
Now here’s the other part – the part that no one is talking about. That comes with the Browns looking at … well, the Browns.
The members of the Browns’ 1986 team will be honored on Sunday when the New York Jets visit FirstEnergy Stadium.
That team 30 years ago did some great things, going a conference-best 12-4 en route to winning its second straight Central Division and advancing to the AFC Championship Game for the first time.
But the Browns didn’t even get to the Super Bowl. Yet this team, for what it did, the thrills it provided and the quality of the people who provided those thrills, remains – a full three decades later – one of the most popular clubs in Browns history.
For those fans under the age of 50, it is unquestionably the most popular. For those over 50, it’s probably still the Kardiac Kids of 1980.
It’s a generational thing. It’s also the age-old question: What do you like better, vanilla ice cream or chocolate? There is no wrong answer. Both are great.
If the Browns’ top men – and woman — are willing to open their eyes and really look at the situation for what it is as today’s festivities play out, they will see some revealing things:
That this town – this region – is like all others in that they love winners (who doesn’t), but they also like men of character, not characters. That 1986 team had both – the on-field success and also the quality of the people, that is, the character without the characters. That’s also the case with the Kardiac Kids.
Hmmmm.
But I digress.
Th current Browns obviously don’t have the prowess on the scoreboard – far from it, in fact, not yet anyway, but, if things work out as planned, they will have it someday. In the meantime, head coach Hue Jackson and the analytics guys – good-quality people themselves — are bringing in good-quality young men, vanquishing knuckleheads off the roster in lightning-quick fashion, some even before they had a chance to soil the locker room once the new regime arrived. Good for them.
So, then, the current team may be halfway there – halfway to where it wants to go, at least in one regard, that of laying the right foundation.
And if these Browns can at some point do what the 1986 Browns did not by getting to a Super Bowl and maybe even winning it, then the celebration will be even bigger than the one that will go on today, and perhaps also better than the ones for the Indians and Cavs since this is, always has been and always will be, a football town and a football region.
Football is king.
Now, how badly do these Browns want it? How badly do they want to be kings?
I think they want it a lot – more than even what they have shared publicly to this point — but we will see. Yes, we will see.
