A little bit of this and a little bit of that as the Browns get ready to play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday Night Football at Huntington Bank Field:
*The major theme each for the 2-8 Browns’ final seven games, especially this one in the limelight against the 8-2 AFC North-leading Steelers, is how much is too much when it comes to testing the patience of co-owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam? Their silence is deafening through all this. They are not offering any public support for General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski. The Haslams must be seething, and rightfully so. How bad does it have to get before they would fire both men, or at least one of them? The owners have been embarrassed in public by their team’s play. I still think that both will be axed at some point, because this is going to get worse before it gets any better. But again, what’s the breaking point? We’ll see.
*We say all the the time here that it’s not necessarily the quarterback’s job to pass for 300 yards and four touchdowns, but rather simply to win the game. There was never a better example of that axiom than in the Browns’ 35-14 loss at New Orleans last Sunday. Cleveland’s Jameis Winston threw for a whopping 395 yards, but it meant nothing because his team was outvoted 21-0 in the crunch time that is the fourth quarter and lost by three touchdowns.
*The game could well boil down to who gets more rushing yardage, Nick Chubb or Najee Harris, and who gets more sacks, T.J. Watt or Myles Garrett.
*And finally, Steelers owner/president Arthur Rooney II, who, by the way, was sent by his parents to Gilmour Academy in the Cleveland suburb of Gates Mills for high school, tells the story of the Steelers and the respect they had for the Browns back in the days of the original franchise. “We watched everything about how they went about their business,” he said. “Whatever they did, we took it and studied it to see if we could apply it to our organization, and it fit, then we did.” Now these current Browns would do well to study the Steelers. But I wonder if pride and ego might keep that from happening.
Steve King
