All throughout the offseason, indeed again and again and again, seemingly a hundred times, we’ve written about the Browns season coming down to whether head coach/de-facto offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski can shake off the rust from the $230 million dollar man, quarterback Deshaun Watson, and get him to play like his old self.
The Browns will win or not, be successful or not, become serious playoff and even Super Bowl contenders or not, as a team, if Stefanski and Watson do the job, singularly and collectively, on their end.
It is a high-risk-high-reward situation — a veritable pressure-cooker, if you will, the likes of which the Browns have not had in a long time.
The heat couldn’t be turned up any more, right?
Well, no, in fact, it could be, and it has been.
Now the Browns, Stefanski and Watson must do what they need to do — already a big challenge — without the NFL’s best running back, Nick Chubb, who was lost for the season after blowing out his knee in last Monday night’s 26-22 loss in Pittsburgh.
It won’t be easy. He is one of the team’s two best players, being to the offense what end Myles Garrett, a future Pro Football Hall of Fame candidate, is to the defense.
But it can be done. It will take Watson being what he can be, but also the rest of the players on an ultra-talented roster stepping up and being a bit better than what they already are.
That includes a defense that is the best the Browns have had in some time.
In 1988, the Browns, after suffering close, tough defeats to the Denver Broncos in the two previous AFC Chsmpionship Games, were picked by nearly everyone to break through and get to the Super Bowl for the first time. But franchise quarterback Bernie Kosar blew out his elbow in the opener, setting off a chain reaction in which the club lost its starting quarterback on five different occasions. It was the worst quarterback injury situation in Browns history, and arguably the worst in NFL history. But the rest of the roster was so good overall that the Browns, in Marty Schottenheimer’s best head coaching job, were still able to finish 10-6 and make the playoffs as a wild card.
Can the Browns (1-1) do it again 35 years later?
The road begins with Sunday’s visit to Cleveland Browns Stadium by the Tennessee Titans.
By Steve King
