The Browns won’t go 0-16 this year.
There, I said it.
Yes, they will win a game – perhaps even two or maybe even three games. But I’m guessing they win two. Three may be a bit much to ask. But you never know.
I don’t know when, where, against whom or how those wins will come, other than to point out that, for the most part, the 0-8 Browns have been getting a little better every week, and if they can get their heads around the fact there is also a second half to these games, they will win. I think they will eventually figure out how to close down a win, and once you do it, you know what it takes and it’s a whole lot easier to do it again.
Everybody – me included – was pointing to last Sunday’s visit by the New York Jets as the last game on the schedule that the Browns had a reasonable chance to win. And that’s true. When you lay it all out on paper, the Jets – a team with all kinds of issues, as evidenced by their 3-5 record – were ripe for the taking. The last eight opponents on Cleveland schedule, including the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium, Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens, San Diego Chargers, Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers (twice)? Well, not so much.
But I never thought the Browns’ first win would be against a second-rate team. That’s too predictable, and the NFL is not very predictable.
Rather, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the strong possibility that the victory will be against a good team that looks at the Browns’ lousy record and just mails in its performance. The Jets did that last Sunday before getting their act together and outscoring the Browns 24-7 in the second half to gain a 31-28 triumph. But, as mentioned, the Jets are not a good team, so what happened in that game doesn’t count.
I’m talking about a very good team that is so unprepared to play that it never gets back on track – even when it gets screamed at by its head coach at halftime — and suffers the embarrassment of being the Browns’ first victim. You see that all the time in the NFL, with upsets being the norm rather than the exception.
Whatever the case, the important things is that the Browns won’t go winless. As much as it’s very hard for even the best NFL teams to go unbeaten, it’s also very hard for even the worst teams to go winless. In both regards, there is simply too much balance for long streaks in either direction, which is why the Browns last year could have – and should have – beaten the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. Who saw that coming?
