DID YOU HAVE A PEP IN YOUR STEP ON FRIDAY MORNING?
By STEVE KING
9-22-18:
I have a good friend who knows nothing about football, and sports overall.
“Don’t do sports,” he says proudly to anyone who will listen.
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I always listen, because I get a kick out of kidding him about it.
Despite that, as we took our morning walk together early Friday, he said to me with a laugh, “Man, you’ve got a pep in your step today.”
“Sure, I do. The Browns won last night,” I replied.
Yes, a pep in my step, even after getting only two hours of sleep.
We all woke up Friday morning sleep-deprived, but instead of being groggy or grumpy, we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and very, very, very happy. We all had a real pep in our step because of the Browns ending their nightmarish streak of 635 winless days by rallying from two touchdowns behind to defeat the New York Jets 21-17 on Thursday night at FirstEnergy Stadium.
Cleveland is a football town. It always has been, and it always will be. That’s just the way it is.
Now, that doesn’t mean the fans here ignore the Indians and Cavaliers. On the contrary, those teams are beloved.
But just not as much as the Browns.
They are the flagship of the fleet, as former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano always called them back in the day. That hasn’t changed, despite all the losing by the Browns recently and all the winning by the Indians and Cavaliers. The mood in town – and also in the region – ebbs and flows on a Monday morning, or in this case a Friday morning, based on how the Browns fared the previous day.
Thus, there had been plenty of feet-dragging since the end of the 2016 season. But not this Friday. The paces were peppy.
Certainly, winning a football game does not solve any of the real-life problems going on either individually or collectively. It doesn’t have that kind of power, nor should it.
What it can do, though – and it does – is take our minds off those problems for a while. And we’ll gladly take that. You bet.
As such, then, Browns fans are hoping for a lot of peppy Mondays – and one peppy Sunday – the rest of the regular season.
Wonder if my walking buddy would notice? I bet so.
But he wouldn’t know why.
That’s OK. He doesn’t need to know. Let him deal with his problems full-force.
RATING THE APPEAL OF THAT BROWNS WIN
9-23-18
You have to have a little gray in your hair – and a good memory — to understand this little bit of news. No problem, I will gladly lend you mine.
It relates to the fact that the NFL Network’s telecast of the Browns’ come-from-behind 21-17 victory over the New York Jets last Thursday night was, with an average audience of 8.6 million, the channel’s largest audience for “Thursday Night Football” in nearly three years, since Dec. 10, 2015.
Yes, part of it was the national allure of the Browns, who were going for their first victory in 635 days (Dec. 24, 2016).
Yes, part of it was the national allure of Browns rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield, the Heisman Trophy winner who was the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft.
Yes, part of it was national allure of the exciting way that Mayfield and the Browns did it, rallying from a 14-0 first-half deficit.
Yes, it all that was certainly a big part of it. It was huge. You can’t deny it, or overlook it.
But what hasn’t been discussed as also being an extremely significant part of that equation is, as longtime Browns fans will recall, that way back in the day during the 50-year tenure of the original Browns franchise, the club always drew huge ratings in Cleveland. In addition, Cleveland had the highest ratings of any city in the league for NFL telecasts, regardless of whether the Browns were involved or not.
That certainly has carried forward into this new era. These Browns fans – these Cleveland viewers – just needed a reason to root and to watch.
And the victory over the Jets, especially with the way it came about and with the big-picture implications, provided that.
All those silly, goofy, misguided and ill-informed media people who claimed the Browns were losing their fan base, had already lost a portion of it, and that those fans would never, ever return, were proven completely wrong by what happened last Thursday night.
Winning is fun. Losing – a lot – is a lot not.
It’s no more complicated than that.
Keep that in mind going forward, particularly if the Browns can string some victories together.
JUST PLEASE SHUT UP, YOU PEOPLE!
9-24-18:
Hue Jackson has taken a lot of criticism in his tenure as head coach of the Browns.
He has deserved almost all of it, but he doesn’t deserve this latest wave.
Jackson took a lot of heat – and even ridicule – for his decision to wait until Monday to announce his starting quarterback for Sunday’s road game against the Oakland Raiders.
Come on.
Come on, people. Are you kidding me? Get real.
We all know – Hue knows, you know, I know and the whole free world knows – that rookie Baker Mayfield is going to be in the lineup for that game. There was breaking nose on ESPN Radio on Sunday saying that Mayfield will be officially named the starter on Monday.
Breaking news? Really? Are you kidding me?
Here’s more breaking news for you: The sun is going to rise on Monday, too.
Most of the media people causing all this silly commotion have never played team sports and never been in a locker room. And as such, they don’t how teams work.
The Browns players were off over the weekend following their Mayfield-inspired come-from-behind 21-17 victory over the New York Jets on Thursday night, thus ending a losing streak that extended back to the next-to-last game of the 2016 season. Jackson couldn’t name Mayfield the starter until the players returned on Monday and he had a chance to sit down with all three quarterbacks to explain his decision and then announce it to the team as a whole before making a public declaration of it later in the day.
To do anything other than that would have been disrespectful to the quarterbacks and the team.
If a media person doesn’t know that, and/or can’t understand it, then he or she should be covering something else that’s not sports.
Hey, misguided, ignorant media people, give Hue a break – give everybody a break – and just shut up.
Please, shut up.
HUE MAKES QB CHANGE, BUT DELICATELY SO
9-25-18:
Once again, we had on Monday a great example of Browns head coach Hue Jackson protecting his quarterbacks – all his quarterbacks.
That’s what he always does. Having been a former longtime quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, he understands the delicate psyche of the quarterback. You have to be careful with them, especially with the guy who is negatively affected when there’s a change.
So while the day was, quite obviously, mostly all about rookie Baker Mayfield after Jackson formally announced him as the starter for Sunday’s road game against the Oakland Raiders, the coach also made sure not to throw under the bus in any way, shape or form the veteran who got replaced, Tyrod Taylor. After all, with the way quarterbacks get hurt in the NFL, Taylor could well return as the starter sometime later in the season, and you want to be sure that he’s ready mentally and emotionally, as well as physically, to play and contribute.
When asked about Taylor’s reaction to the decision, Jackson said, “He is a professional. Obviously, he is competitive. Nobody wants to hear that they are going in a different direction, but he understands it, too. I think the most important thing he wants is to get healthy and make sure he is ready to help the football team. Any competitor is disappointed in that situation, but he is a pro so he is going to what he needs to do to keep helping this football team win.”
Jackson was also asked about Taylor not playing well in the first half against the New York Jets last Thursday night, and if Taylor had been “looking over his shoulder” at Mayfield.
“No,” Jackson said flatly. “We did not do a lot of things early on offense in my opinion to help Tyrod. There were some blown assignments and mental errors we had that let some people had some free runners at him. We put him in a tough spot, too. It was not just Tyrod neither. Obviously, we got those things shored up pretty quickly there as we started the second half to where we could protect Baker better, and he made some plays with his arm.”
Finally, and most importantly, Jackson was asked about Taylor’s future with the Browns.
“He is going to be right here. He is not going anywhere. I think that is important,” Jackson made clear.
“Like I said, I think part of Baker being able to play like he did was because of Tyrod and Drew (Stanton, third-string quarterback). I do not want to upset that room that way. I do not think there is any reason to.
“Tyrod is going to be needed. He is the backup quarterback on this team if he is healthy, and he has played. His teammates know who he is and how he goes about the rhythm of his game. I think it is always good to have that kind of depth at that position, especially if we are travelling down this road, which we are.”
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