Does it matter if the Browns win tonight’s preseason finale against the Chicago Bears at FirstEnergy Stadium?
Does it matter if the Browns, now 0-3, just like the Bears, avoid becoming just the third team in club history to finish the preseason winless?
Those are not easy questions to answer.
The starters usually don’t play at all in the fourth preseason game in the NFL, but according to head coach Hue Jackson, the Browns’ first-teamers will see a little bit of time – but not much – tonight. Why? Because they need to. The Browns are coming off a 30-13 drubbing at the hands of the mediocre Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Thursday night in the dress rehearsal for the regular season. They need all the work they can get.
With that, then, perhaps they should play longer than a series or two, but at the same time, the Browns already don’t have many good players as it is so they can ill afford to lose any to injury tonight in a meaningless practice game. And the longer they stand on the sideline, the more chance the starters have of staying healthy for the regular-season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 11, just 10 days away.
Thus, if the Browns win tonight, they will do so on the backs of players who, to borrow a phrase from former Cleveland head coach Butch Davis, “will be selling shoes at Walmart next week.” He was referring to the final cutdowns on Saturday to get to the mandatory regular-season roster limit of 53.
Does a win in that regard mean anything?
Probably not.
Or maybe so.
Sure, this is the preseason and nothing that happens in these games – unless, of course, injuries – means much of anything. By midnight tonight, it will all be largely forgotten.
If the Browns were to have gotten a “meaningful” win in the preseason, it would have been against the Bucs when the starters played a half. So in essence, to win tonight and finish 1-3 instead of 0-4, does not, at first blush, represent much of a difference. Neither record is good.
But since this is the 70th anniversary of the Browns’ birth in 1946 and thus a special time in team history, it’s a bad look public relations-wise to go through the entire preseason without a win, especially when it’s been done only twice before, in 2008 (0-4) and 1972 (0-6).
The 2008 preseason was definitely a sign of things to come in the regular season. The Browns, predicted to pick up on the momentum gained from 2007’s 10-6 finish and seriously challenge for a Super Bowl berth, suffered all kinds of injuries in the preseason. Most returned for the opener, but in having missed so much work, they were as rusty an old gate. They were hardly ready to play games that counted.
Not surprisingly, the Browns lost their first three games and never totally got back on track, going 4-12 and causing General Manager Phil Savage and head coach Romeo Crennel to get fired.
And in some respects, the 1972 preseason was also a sign of things to come. In other respects, it was not.
The Browns started the regular season with a 2-3 record, and in the three losses, they scored a combined total of just 17 points. After back-to-back one-sided defeats at home in which they were embarrassingly inept offensively, second-year head coach Nick Skorich made the difficult decision to bench veteran quarterback and team leader Bill Nelsen in favor of third-year pro Phipps. Nelsen had helped lead the Browns to the NFL Championship Game in both 1968 and ’69, and to the AFC Central title in 1971, but his knees were totally shot. He couldn’t move, and it showed.
Phipps was taken third overall in the 1970 NFL Draft with the pick obtained from the Miami Dolphins in a trade involving wide receiver Paul Warfield. The Browns had been waiting since then to turn the reins over to him for good, and this sure looked like that time.
The change invigorated the offense and the team overall, as the Browns captured six straight and eight of their last nine to finish 10-4 and earn the AFC’s lone wild-card playoff berth.
Back to the present. No one knows for sure, of course, but it appears for all the world that if the Browns lose tonight, their 0-4 record would indeed be a sign of things to come. Even now, before they meet the Bears, the Browns do not appear at all to be ready for the start of the regular season, in no small part because of all of their youth and inexperience after the extradition of many of the veterans to launch perhaps the most extensive rebuild in team history.
A win tonight would not change that perception, but it would keep the Browns from falling into a historical black hole – at least in the preseason. The regular season may be a different story.
So would a win tonight really matter?
Who knows?
