The matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers tomorrow at Heinz Field won’t be the only game for Browns fans to keep an eye on this weekend.
There’s also the Houston Texans visiting the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday Night Football.
The Bengals, of course, are undefeated at 8-0 and, with a 3½-game lead at the halfway point of their schedule, are running away with the AFC North title.
The Texans are just 3-5, but they are in second place in the AFC South, only a half-game behind the Indianapolis Colts (4-5), who, with quarterback Andrew Luck possibly out as many as four weeks with a lacerated kidney, are wounded ducks ripe for the taking.
But there’s more – much more – to it than that. There’s also the fact that former Brown and Cleveland St. Ignatius High School product Brian Hoyer is back as the starting quarterback, and firmly entrenched this time after the Texans’ release of head-case Ryan Mallett.
Hoyer, who grew up in the western Cleveland suburbs rooting for the Browns, is the guy who was benched last year in favor of then rookie Johnny Manziel by head coach Mike Pettine, with pressure from owner Jimmy Haslam through General Manager Ray Farmer, while the Browns were 7-6 with three games to play and still in the playoff hunt.
In a story we don’t need to dwell on once again, Manziel was a disaster, almost as bad as the texts Farmer illegally sent to the sideline to urge Pettine to play the No. 22 overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft.
Last offseason, with their quarterback situation still tremendously unsettled, the Browns made no attempt whatsoever to re-sign Hoyer and let him walk away in free agency.
The Browns washed their hands of Hoyer because he refused to be a mentor to Manziel.
Huh, so they gave away a productive, winning quarterback because he refused to be a tutor for a kid who never should have been drafted in the first place? Talk about making a major decision based on the false assumption that Manziel could ever be the team’s franchise quarterback. Trying to make him into a viable NFL quarterback is like trying to teach a groundhog to fly. It’s futile.
And to make matters even worse, the Browns replaced Hoyer with a veteran mentor by the name of Josh McCown, who just loses and loses and loses some more when he plays.
If the Browns wanted a teacher for McCown, then they should have hired a coach – or a priest.
Considering all that, then, Farmer is praying – fervently so, to the point of lighting candles at church — that this doesn’t happen: Hoyer plays like a champion and leads the Texans past Cincinnati en route to grabbing the South title, while at the same time Manziel, McCown or maybe even Austin Davis flame out and crash-land the Browns into a 2-14 finish.
If that happens – and here’s betting that it does – then Farmer, who, unbelievably so, said in his recent press conference that the seat he’s sitting on is no hotter now than it ever was, will get a whole new appreciation of what hot really is. He had better wear fire-retardant pants.
