BROWNS RANKED 14TH IN NFL BY USA TODAY
By STEVE KING
The Browns may have dropped their regular-season finale in Baltimore last Sunday, but the impressive, exciting way they played in a 26-24 loss to the AFC North champion Ravens that went down to the final seconds, won over a lot of people, including USA Today staff writer Nate Davis.
In what he called his “NFL power rankings, post-regular season edition,” he moved the Browns up two spots to 14th in his weekly ratings. Yes, that’s right, 14th. They are not just in the very last spot of the upper half of the 32-team league, as they were last week in being No. 16, but actually a couple two notches into that pack.
But the fact that the Browns are ranked anywhere in the middle of the league just a year after their historically terrible 0-16 record caused them to be rated dead-last by Davis – and everybody else, for that matter — in 2017, is nothing short of jaw-dropping. While improvement for the Browns was expected this season – after all, it could not have been any worse than last year – nobody, but nobody saw a final 7-8-1 mark coming, especially considering that the club was just 2-5-1 at the midway point.
Here’s what Davis wrote about the Browns:
“What if Baker Mayfield had started sooner? What if Hue Jackson had been fired sooner? Regardless, Cleveland’s ‘Factory of Sadness’ has apparently been shuttered.”
Yippeeee!
The Browns are ranked just one spot behind the Pittsburgh Steelers (13th) and two places in back of the defending Super Bowl champion and playoff-bound again Philadelphia Eagles (12th). They are ahead of the Minnesota Vikings (15th), Atlanta Falcons (16th), Tennessee Titans (17th) and Green Bay Packers (18th).
Again, at the start of the year, something like all that was incomprehensible.
The New Orleans, Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams remained 1-2-3, respectively, while the Kansas City Chiefs (fourth) and Ravens (fifth) both improved one place.
The rest of the top 10 includes the Los Angeles Chargers (sixth), New England Patriots (seventh), Indianapolis Colts (eighth), Seattle Seahawks (ninth) and Houston Texans (10th).
The other team ahead of the Browns, in 11th place, is the Dallas Cowboys.
For what it’s worth, the Miami Dolphins take over for the Browns at No. 32 this year. Let the people on South Beach chew on that all winter.
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON, AND THAT’S OK
What’s going on with the Browns’ head-coaching search?
That is, not just what is being reported, assumed, believed, thought, imagined, fabricated or rumored, but what is really, truly going on?
Good question, one that can’t really be answered now, or, at least for the most part, probably ever.
Oh, sure, we will, of course, at some point be told who the Browns are hiring. But the road – the journey – to that hiring, that which is going on now, may forever remain a secret because of relationships, promises and other delicate issues.
And that’s a shame, from an entertainment standpoint and a wow-factor, because this appears for all the world to be really fascinating – and that’s judging from what very, very little we know. That says everything.
It is, and has been from very beginning, an extremely important hire. More than that, it is a seminal moment – perhaps THE seminal moment — in the history of the new – expansion-era – Browns.
There have certainly been big, defining moments for the Browns since they returned to the field in 1999. Actually, there have been a number of them, all of which the Browns have failed to get right, in no small part because they’ve never had the key ingredient of a franchise quarterback.
Now that they seemingly have one in Baker Mayfield, the Browns are halfway to where they need to be – where they want to go. However, to hit the bullseye and give themselves the best chance of competing for not just that long-sought-after first Super Bowl Appearance, but a Super Bowl championship, they need their franchise coach.
And to give himself the best chance of finding not just a great coach but rather the absolutely best fit for the Browns, General Manager John Dorsey is, just like he did in his search for Mayfield, covering his tracks and keeping his true intentions to no one except himself and those who are the very closest to him, doing his best secret-agent impersonation.
If people say they know what’s going on, don’t believe them. The fun of it is trying to guess. That’s the best that anyone on the outside can do.
In the big picture, though, the most fun for Browns fans will not be figuring out the path, but instead getting the coach who arrives at the end of that path.
