I was a talking to a local high school boys basketball head coach last winter and he was explaining to me how his team, which struggled for half the regular season, had finally turned it around and gotten red-hot down the stretch heading into the tournament, finally transforming itself into the squad that everybody thought it would be all along.

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“We had five seniors who were three-year starters, but things weren’t smooth,” he said. “Something was wrong, and for the life of us, my assistants and I couldn’t figure out what it was. We tried all kinds of things, but nothing worked. Nothing changed. We didn’t get any worse, but we didn’t get any better, either. It was really frustrating all of us.

“Then our point guard got hurt and missed six games. He had his liabilities — he was small, and because of that, he didn’t play, and really couldn’t play, great defense — but we felt a commitment to keep him, and the four other guys, in the lineup so as to keep that group together in their senior season. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

“When he got hurt, we replaced him with a guy who was much bigger and, because of his size and length, was a much better defensive player and also a much better offensive player because he could penetrate through the defense and take the ball inside. We had talked about as a staff doing this, using him, even before the injury, but, like I said, we balked.

“It immediately made us a much better team at both ends of the floor and we became what I thought all along that we’d be. And the wins just started coming.”

The injury, which was not the fault, or cause, of anyone — it just dropped out out of the sky — changed the dynamics of the team dramatically. 

As so it is, too, with the Browns. I am not trying to compare that high school basketball team to the guys wearing the plain orange helmets, but at the same time, I absolutely and emphatically am. Indeed, injuries to Kenny Pickett and Dillon Gabriel gave Shedeur Sanders an opportunity the other night and he made the most of it. So, just like those high school coaches did, the Browns, instead of fighting against it, need to seize the opportunity to embrace the change and make the most of it. Let’s hope they do.

Steve King

Check out Shedeur Sanders mic’d up:

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