When I think — and likely, I would guess when most of you think — of the Browns playing the New York Jets, it’s of a time when both teams were legitimate contenders for championships.
Their first game against one another was the initial Monday Night Football contest and the 1970 season opener, with the Browns, fresh off two straight NFL Championship Game appearances in the final years before the merger with the AFL, earned a 31-21 win over the Jets, who were just 18 months removed from a huge upset triumph over the supposedly invincible Baltimore Colts. The excitement of Cleveland’s victory jump-started MNF to the incredible heights it has attained.
A little over a decade and a half later, in the 1986 AFC Divisional Playoffs, again at Cleveland Stadium, was another instant classic as the Browns, trailing 20-10 with 4:14 left in the fourth quarter, rallied to win 23-20 in two overtimes.
Wow! What games! What memories, even all these years — all these decades — later!
But when I think of the Browns playing the Jets, I don’t think — and I absolutely don’t want to think — of the sloppy, ugly and unwatchable mess that will be on display on Sunday in New Jersey in a matchup of two clubs that are a combined 3-13. The franchises need binoculars to see the .500 mark, let alone the playoffs.
I can’t speak for the Jets fans. However, I sure can speak for the followers of the Browns in saying that this stuff has to stop, not two or three years down the road, but next season. No excuses. No long-range plans. And certainly not even a whisper of the most hideous sentence in sports, “It’s a process.”
Like you, I am all processed out. I want results. I want wins. I want those legitimate championship aspirations again.
Steve King
